Unidentified plane violates no fly zone
 

Re: Unidentified plane violates no fly zone
 

That would be the White House no fly zone ;) Not a lot of info at that link yet but no doubt it will fill up with plenty of panic ridden guesswork soon lol

Re: Unidentified plane violates no fly zone
 

heh no doubt, just heard off someone else it was a cessna, whatever that is, but its meant to be too small to do anything really.

No doubt it'll be anouther story of how the mighty americans defeated the cessna.

Re: Unidentified plane violates no fly zone
 

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,156217,00.html told you they would panic :erm:

Re: Unidentified plane violates no fly zone
 

All clear given according to that link.

Re: Unidentified plane violates no fly zone
 

A Cessna is a light aircraft, owned by rich people, or used by companies to fly executives around without using commercial airlines. A cessna will have less than 20 passenger sets (usually around 10).

http://www.cessna.com/

Re: Unidentified plane violates no fly zone
 

Cessna produce a wide range of craft, from two seat trainers to reasonable sized (10 seats or so) executive jets like the Citation. What is referred to by the media as a 'Cessna' is usually a 172 or 182, which is a four seat single engine light aircraft. Basically the Ford Focus of the skies - there have been over 37000 172s and 20000+ 182s built.

Pictures of models of them.
http://www.aviation-central.com/priv...anes/apb00.htm

In 1994 a Cessna 150 crashed on the White House lawn.
In 1987 Mathias Rust flew a 172 all the way to Moscow, landing in Red Square.

Re: Unidentified plane violates no fly zone
 

Bwahahaha, a Cessna...?!? As BBKing points out, it's most likely gonna be a 172 or a 182. The only damage that could cause is maybe it'd leave a scratch on the window as it bounced off it (leaving the window intact).

I liked the comment about it being escorted out of the no-fly zone by 2 F-16s. I bet they had trouble constantly flying that slowly! :D

Re: Unidentified plane violates no fly zone
 

who got lost then :dozey: , mind you i reckon the pilot will have been sh!!tting themselves when confronted by f16's and blackhawks :disturbd: :D :D

Re: Unidentified plane violates no fly zone
 

On full throttle it'll do about 140mph - below the F-16's take-off speed of 140 knots or so. I should think they were flying round it, like hyperactive terriers round an old granny.

Re: Unidentified plane violates no fly zone
 

dont forget the blackhawk that can fly backwards faster than it could fly forwards ;) :D :D

Re: Unidentified plane violates no fly zone
 

Wasn't that the Austin Allegro?

Reading further, a guy in Denmark's got a page about being given an hour in an F-16 simulator and apparently on full throttle you can pull the nose up and waddle along on the edge at about 95 knots Love to see a picture of that.

http://www.jetpilot.dk/WarStories/F16_report.htm

Re: Unidentified plane violates no fly zone
 

The damage it could cause would rather depend on how much anthrax, explosives or radioactive dirty bombs etc it could have been carrying.

Re: Unidentified plane violates no fly zone
 

Just what I was going to say.

Do we have a no fly zone around downing street & parliament?

Re: Unidentified plane violates no fly zone
 

No, but airspace over London at low level is restricted so if you have not filed you flight plan you would be in trouble, that and flying a single engine over London is I think unapproved as you have no get out of jail free plan in the event of engine failiure. We also fly straight over Westminster castle, stack jets over Canary Wharf etc.

Washington airport is incredibly close to the city, just over the river and the glide path is quite complex as it involves a couple of sharp turns to avoid overflying the whitehouse, pentagon, capitol building etc. If you deviate from the flight path they are over you like hawks (well more like F16s actually - hawks are not particularly well armed). I'll find the pictures I took at Christmas of how close the jets are to the major monuments.

Re: Unidentified plane violates no fly zone
 

Not all planes with 2 engines can stay in the air running on the one engine, such as the beechcraft baron. Even with just the pilot, if the one engine was the fail you won't be able to keep it in the air for long.

Re: Unidentified plane violates no fly zone
 

I know... I was only joking. :rolleyes: If you wanna get serious, I wrote my university dissertation on airline security, as I was working for Air France at the time and had access-all-areas at Orly airport. But I much prefer being lighthearted.

See above.

Re: Unidentified plane violates no fly zone
 

Useful article from the CAA

http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/7/DAP_EIS04.pdf

Re: Unidentified plane violates no fly zone
 

Living under the Heathrow approach is a fact of life for thousands, including me.

It's worth checking the photographs of what damage the Cessna did in 1994 - it hit the lawn and bounced into the White House.

Mind you, the plane that hit the Pirelli Building in Milan did a fair bit more damage. Modern space frame buildings are more susceptible than older masonry structures like the White House and Capitol - it would indeed bounce off either of those.

You can fill a Cessna 172 with about 400kg of stuff, including pilot and fuel. That's not much, although any terrorists out there might note that it's enough for a reasonable sized conventional bomb (the 2001 Ealing bomb contained 40kg of explosive, but wasn't fatal to people even standing five metres away).

Dirty bombs, anthrax and such things are far more frightening in newspapers than in reality. Any terrorist worth his salt knows that releasing a lot of energy in a short space of time is the best way to get noticed.

Re: Unidentified plane violates no fly zone
 

So Pilot say 80kg - Fuel 40Kg payload at most 280kg

Re: Unidentified plane violates no fly zone
 

American pilot - 160kg :P

What sort of volume is 280kg of explosive? Cessnas aren't that roomy inside.

[I do hope MI5 aren't reading the next set of Google searches I'm about to do]

C-4 plastic explosive - 1.60 g/cc

1 cc is a cube 1cm on each side. 1000cm on each side is a cubic metre or 100x100x100 cc=10^6 cc

So 1m^3 of C-4 weighs 1 600 000 grams or 1 600 kg or 1.6 tonnes. This would be

a) Quite expensive (£24,00 0 or so)
b) Devastating
c) Heavier than the entire aircraft

200kg would be 1/8 of a cubic metre of C-4, or a cube 50cm on each side. That would fit in a Cessna, I think, and it would have a chance of getting into the air.

200kg is officially (for quarrying/demolition) unsafe up to 500m away - not that it will kill you, but 500m is a safe distance for the hoi polloi to stand at.

200kg will blow a hole through seven feet of reinforced concrete, roughly, if placed directly in contact. Obviously it's hard to park a Cessna close enough to the building to get the full effect.

So in the worst case scenario a Cessna with as much high-grade explosive as it can carry having a really lucky hit would probably knock a hole in the wall of the White House or Capitol and make life rather unpleasant within 100-200 metres. So getting down into the bunkers seems quite a sensible precaution.

I'm not going to post any links. I can hear helicopters coming!