AOPA Pilot Magazine - September 2021 - 22

WAYPOINTS
Why we fly
Appreciating our freedom to fly
two decades later
BY THOMAS B. HAINES / Editor in Chief
THE NEW HEADING from the controller allowed me to cut the corner,
bypassing the Hagerstown, Maryland, VOR and turning me more
northerly toward my destination of Lock Haven, Pennsylvania.
As the expanded Camp David restricted area slid by off my right,
I wondered what President Biden might be doing over there on
this beautiful summer Saturday morning. I continued north, passing
over the endless ridges and valleys of the Keystone State, this
morning many of the valleys cloaked in a thin layer of fog. Bright
and beautiful at 5,000 feet, but probably a little gloomy for the
ground bound in those little towns tucked into the nooks and crannies
of the Appalachians.
I find the terrain in this part of the world fascinating-an undulating
forest. Beautiful to observe, but always making me wonder
where I would stuff the Bonanza should a problem arise. Less than
40 minutes later I crossed the last ridge just south of Lock Haven,
made a wide right turn to avoid some departing traffic, and soon
settled onto Runway 27R as a Piper Cub touched down on the grass
of 27L. I felt like an interloper in my Beechcraft, arriving at the
historic home of the original Piper factory. Many of the Cubs that
had filled the field a day earlier for the Sentimental Journey Fly-In
had departed already, but I enjoyed my day there. And I got to see
those same ridges and valleys at the end of the day lit by a setting
sun, touching down back home at Frederick, Maryland, at dusk.
A couple of weeks later I was northbound, flying a Cessna
Citation M2 business jet at Flight Level 200 over a solid white
undercast in Oregon and Washington. We stayed low because it
was a short flight; just as well, as it gave us a more intimate look at
Mount Hood, Mount Adams, Mount St. Helens, and Mount Rainier
heaving themselves up out of the clouds. Breathtaking.
As general aviation pilots we get to experience these vistas in
ways that few others do-from canyons to crops and water falls
to fireworks, we view geologic patterns, weather phenomena, and
much more unseen by others.
And we nearly lost it all 20 years ago this month when a group
of terrorists turned airliners into weapons of mass destruction,
killing thousands in New York, Washington, and Shanksville,
Pennsylvania. The understandable fear and confusion shut down
the U.S. airspace system for the first time in modern history.
Watching those horrible events unfold that day, it was easy to
surmise that the freedom to fly that we had cherished for nearly a
22
AOPA PILOT / September 2021
century at that point was in peril. And indeed it was. There was a
mass scramble to get the airlines flying again, but suddenly suspicious
security agencies didn't trust " little airplanes. " The idea of an
" unknown " pilot flying around without anyone knowing where he
or she might be going was simply too much for the security experts
to comprehend. " You mean they don't even have to file a flight
plan? " was a common question to our team working at the FAA to
get GA flying again-as if a filed flight plan was somehow a guarantee
of safety. The airline flights, after all, had been on flight plans.
GA was shut down for days. Eventually IFR flights became
possible, but no VFR flying in Class B airspace near primary airports.
Our team advocated for more freedom for GA and over time
it happened, but not before some other weirdness cropped up. At
one point, the Department of Energy insisted that airplanes not
loiter over nuclear power plants. Meanwhile, they had removed
the locations for those plants from all the publicly available maps
and charts. So how, exactly, were we to avoid flying over something
when we don't know where that something is?
Many pilots thought the ability to fly past Manhattan on the
Hudson River corridor would be gone forever. But that too was
returned to us. Those of us who fly in the national capital region
still must deal with the special flight rules area and the flight
restricted zone. While annoying and tedious, most have learned
to live with the procedures.
Flight schools and flight instructors still deal with paperwork
issues necessary to training foreign students-another result of
9/11, but even that has become workable.
Two decades later, our
freedom to fly is intact,
although onerous regulations
often crop up making us
always cautious. But on sunny
Saturdays when you can skim
over a tree-lined ridge and slip
into a valley airport for camaraderie
with fellow aviators,
it's easy to forget about the
potential challenges and focus
on the pure joy of aviation.
thomas.haines@aopa.org
See more about the
twentieth anniversary of
9/11 and its impact on GA
in " The Day Aviation Stood
Still " on p. 66.
Editor in Chief TOM HAINES
was among the AOPA
staffers working for weeks to
help bring normalcy back to
GA flying after 9/11.
AOPA Pilot Magazine - September 2021

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