AOPA Pilot Magazine - February 2013 - 61

Fleming had been in custody
for about 22 hours when an official at the
detention center entered the cell with his
arrest warrant. Fleming struggled to read
the charges against him, as his prescription
glasses had been taken during processing.
The officer read the charges for him.
“That the defendant did, on or about
July 26, 2012, commit the offense of breach
of peace,” the officer read. The accusations sounded serious: “flying very close to
the nuclear plant dome in a ‘no fly zone,’”
“escalated a multi-jurisdictional call out to
a homeland security situation,” “ordered
several times to land,” “causing the disturbance throughout the community.” These
words contrasted sharply with the account
Fleming and others later gave—of a routine
flight cut short without cause by an agency
operating outside of its jurisdiction.
Fleming, 70, had flown his RolladenSchneider LS8-18 sailplane over the H.B.
Robinson Nuclear Generating Station near

Hartsville, South Carolina, at an altitude
of 1,518 feet msl—by his estimates, about
1,000 feet above the power plant’s dome and
then circled in the vicinity of nearby Lake
Robinson for about 40 minutes looking for
lift. No airspace restrictions were printed
on sectional charts; no notam marked the
area off-limits. When a woman at Hartsville
Regional Airport relayed over the unicom
that law enforcement wanted him to land,
he had flown to that airport and landed,
greeted by a swarm of law enforcement
vehicles. He spent the night awake in a cell
with 11 other inmates, and finally left the
detention center 24 hours after his arrest,
exhausted and eager to clear his name. A
month later, the charges were dropped.
FLEMING TOOK OFF from Bermuda High
Soaring in Jefferson, South Carolina, at
12:41 p.m., towed to 2,000 feet agl by a Piper
Pawnee. He had intended to fly to Asheboro,

North Carolina; Dillon, South Carolina; and
Winnsboro, South Carolina, to complete a
500-kilometer course, but in soaring, one
goes where there’s lift. A flight recorder in
the aircraft shows Fleming’s circling course
as he searched for thermals to the east. He
had looped down to Bennettsville, South
Carolina, then decided to head home. The
path back to Lancaster, traveling from one
small airport to the next in case the lift died,
took him near Hartsville Regional Airport—
and the H.B. Robinson Nuclear Generating
Station, two nautical miles away.
Fleming approached Hartsville from
the north at 3,100 feet msl, flying southwest
toward Lake Robinson. He had been up to
5,000 feet earlier in the flight, and knew that
the thermals went up that high if he could
find one. He only had to get high enough to
glide back to Lancaster.
On the Charlotte sectional chart, the
nuclear power plant is marked only with

ROBIN FLEMING

has flown
sailplanes
around South
Carolina for
the past 10
years.

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AOPA Pilot Magazine - February 2013

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