Not Clear How That Will Work Given TFR, Domed Stadium

Superbowl XLVI will be played next month in Indianapolis, in Lucas Oil Stadium (photo: Caldwell317/Wikipedia), and at least three groups say they're planning to hire banner planes to publicize messages to the crowd. There are two obvious problems with that plan. There will be a TFR which, despite invoking security as a premise, is widely seen as an excuse to control advertising. But the other issue is that Lucas Oil Stadium has a dome.

Granted, that dome is retractable, and the NFL will want it open if the weather is good, which might provide a wider field of the sky. But the TFR is expected to include the normal 10-mile-radius no-fly zone in its center, which would pretty much ensure that no banner planes could get close enough to the event to have their messages read by people seated inside. There will no doubt be lots of ground traffic before and after the game, but nowhere near as concentrated or attentive as a typical stadium opportunity.

So, who are the groups who've arrived at this plan to spread their message by air, and are trying to raise money to make it happen?

"Impeach Obama Tea Party" appears to be an offshoot of the Tea Party movement managed mainly through a Facebook account, with only about 8,300 "likes" so far.

"Stop Obama Now - San Diego" is administered through a MeetUp.com page. The page says, in part, "This is an independent group that concentrates on street protests, mainly to protest the continuing outrages of the statist Obama regime and calls for his removal. This is a group for people that want to be more outspoken, more anti-Obama and less Republican-oriented than typical Tea Party."

Finally, "Boycott Oprah" has a website with its own URL, and appears to be a group of people of unknown size concerned that the talk show queen is "working to give our country’s great religions moral equivalence to any snake charming, Kool-Aid drinking, new-age nonsense."

Perhaps we should just be happy that someone still finds value in general aviation.

FMI: www.facebook.com/ImpeachObamaTeaParty ; www.meetup.com/StopObamaNowSD/ ; www.boycott-oprah.com