We may already be seeing the beginning of the government’s plan to eliminate VFR flying.
Following the initial reporting by Ken Mead of AOPA, FLYING’s Robert Goyer, (among others) have been relaying the growing numbers of random, unfounded stops by heavily armed, threatening teams from CBP, Homeland Security, and local authorities of aircraft that were flying under VFR rules.
Pilots should consider the following:
1. The government has identified VFR flying as an area that they do not control in the way that they do most other areas of transportation. They will work to eliminate that ambiguity.
2. The government is being influenced by a concept described in a book, read and promoted by President Obama, named Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness, by American academics Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein. One interviewer, reported, “When I talked to Thaler earlier this year about Nudge and asked him what was the core theme of the book, he said: “The central question is really whether by understanding human nature you can use what we call “choice architecture” to devise policies and institutions that make it more likely that individuals will make decisions that are good for them.”” Thaler has just come off of a stint working in the Executive Office of the President at the White House where his job was to devise situations where people were put in situations where the choices they were given were biased toward decisions that the government had determined beforehand were beneficial.
It is not unreasonable to suggest that the probing, increasing visible stops of pilots by authorities could be the initial attempts to “nudge” the aviation system in a direction that they desire (or to test to see what kind of response they get).
3. Federal and local agencies now use massive, overwhelming, intimidating force in unthreatening situations. For example, John and Martha King were confronted as though they were known drug runners when they were stopped by four cars worth of gun drawn officers because of an N-number confusion. The point is that there is a clear, new, nation-wide attempt by law enforcement agencies to default to force and intimidation as the de facto approach in increasing numbers of situations. There is a clear trend toward intimidation.
4. The most likely scenario – one used in many other situations – is to capitalize on an upcoming event, either contrived or not, to try to make the point that this lack of control presents the country with a vulnerability that must be eliminated.
5. There are a number of defensive strategies that could mounted to fend off this trend. One is to begin to raise the awareness of the importance of VFR flying by reminding the pilot community of the unique, beneficial value of coming and going as we wish. A clear community-wide commitment to the values of VFR flight would be useful if there were a future run at visual flying.
Another would be to become increasing vocal, as AOPA and FLYING, and other publications have been, about the efforts of the government to stop pilots without probable cause.
There could also be defensive legislative remedies as well.
It would be very sad to lose the last real example of freedom that aviators in the U. S. (and not many other countries) have — to take to the sky without a reason or necessary destination, only because of the joy and wonder of it all.
The opinions expressed by the bloggers do not reflect AOPA’s position on any topic.