NY Senator Wants To Track All GA Flights Over New York City

Perhaps Sen Charles Schumer (D-NY) just doesn't get it. Perhaps he knows something we don't. Schumer, still fretting over the possibility of a terror attack involving GA aircraft, now wants the FAA to shut down the Hudson River approach -- forever. He also wants tighter security at New York's many heliports.

Wait 'til Phil Boyer and the AOPA get ahold of this one.

"It's crazy that we're operating the same way that we did 10 years ago, and that we can't give air traffic controllers the tools they need to know if a private plane veers off course," Schumer said at a Manhattan news conference Saturday.

But Boyer and company maintain general aviation is no threat to national security -- not in New York and not in Washington, where Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher came within a whisker of being shot down when his King Air 200 entered the ADIZ and was misidentified by a civilian radar operator.

"Once again, GA has been made the scapegoat," said Boyer. "The problem is with the bureaucracy that prevents the FAA and the security agencies from talking to each other despite the fact that they built a $20 million command facility designed specifically to coordinate the efforts of agencies protecting the airspace around the nation's capital."

FMI: www.schumer.senate.gov, www.aopa.org