Pennsylvania Pilot's Joyride Points Out Ongoing Problems

"Heaven forbid, this should be an emergency. We have to come up with some better ways of... getting assistance to us with things like this."

Those words were uttered in frustration January 15th by David Urban, who was an air traffic controller at Philadelphia International Airport when authorities say a drunken pilot blew through controlled airspace on a meandering, sometimes harrowing joyride.

John Salamone of Pottstown (PA) is accused of taking his Piper Cherokee on a four-hour joyride, during which controllers and FAA officials had no idea whether he was drunk, in distress or a terrorist bent on destroying some target near the East Coast.

"Looks like he's doing aerobatics," said the pilot of a Delta Connection flight carrying 24 passengers, after receiving instructions to avoid Salamone's small plane four miles ahead. The transcripts were obtained by the Philadelphia Inquirer.

"Great place to do 'em, isn't it?" the controller answered.

The Inquirer reports controllers at Philadelphia International had to reroute traffic no fewer than six times to get it out of the way of the meandering Cherokee. Controllers repeatedly flashed runway lights at Salamone, who was unresponsive to radio calls from the tower, hoping he'd get the message and land. Instead, the Inquirer reports Salamone swooped as low as 100 feet near the approach end of one runway, near the Navy shipyard, coming within a half-mile of a US Airways flight carrying 37 passengers.

At some point late in Salamone's wandering flight, Urban and his colleagues determined that the Cherokee wasn't a security threat. After consulting with supervisors in New York, who in turn called NORAD, controllers instead tagged Salamone a "Class B violator," given the seemingly random flight path and the apparent lack of a terror target.

NORAD, in turn, contacted the FBI and other members of the Domestic Events Network, formed after the terror attacks of 9/11. They concluded Salamone's journey was "a non-event," NORAD spokesman Lt. Col. Roberto Garza told the newspaper. "We didn't need to send the F-15s."

But still, Urban wasn't sure. Left to his own devices, he consulted his list of law enforcement agencies in eastern Pennsylvania and western New Jersey. That list was not only incomplete, it was apparently inaccurate.

Urban called the New Jersey State Police. But Urban had the wrong number for the aviation unit. Instead of getting a state trooper, he got a recording.

"I got no one to answer," he was heard to say on the ATC tape. "Someone in the air to identify or do something to this guy would have been much better."

Even after he made contact with a real human being at the New Jersey State Police, Urban was treated as a low-priority. At one point, during a conference call with New York controllers, his temper apparently got the best of him. "I'm sorry if my temper is short," he told a colleague in New York, explaining that he had been put on hold for "10 minutes" while trying to get help from New Jersey.

New Jersey State police spokesman Sgt. Frank Emanuele told the Philadelphia Inquirer Urban should have said it was an emergency. "If we're not notified, we can't respond," he said.

Urban did not call the Pennsylvania State Police, which has helicopters attached to all of its posts. There's no indication why that call was never made -- the Inquirer reports the FAA didn't make Urban or any other controller in the tower that night available for comment.

Three hours into the flight, controllers finally heard from Salamone. "Realized I was off course... realized I was in your airspace," he said on radio. "How about if I just land and you tell me what I am supposed to do?"

Salamone had one other question: "Am I going to lose my license?"

"I don't know anything about that," controller Tom Young said. "How about we just get you on the ground as soon as we can?"

But it was another hour before Salamone landed -- back home in Pottstown. In the process of heading home, he almost collided with police helicopters twice and flew to within a quarter-mile of the Limerick nuclear power plant. There, workers considered shutting down the reactors, even though they didn't consider the general aviation aircraft much of a threat.

"A plane that small is not likely to do much damage - even if it was loaded with explosives," Limerick spokesman Craig Nesbit told the Inquirer.

Salamone missed his first approach to Pottstown, almost colliding with the Philadelphia police helicopter that had followed him home. Salamone made one last radio transmission: "Have I smelled like a cheap cigar or what?"

Salamone finally landed with one fuel tank completely dry and less than 17 minutes of fuel in the other tank. He was taken into custody and given a blood alcohol test. Authorities said his blood alcohol content was .15 percent -- almost twice the legal limit for driving a car.

"It just shows you how things haven't changed," Andrew R. Thomas told the Inquirer. He's an aviation security analyst and author of Aviation Insecurity: The New Challenge of Air Travel. "If this is what homeland security is after hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent, what does this say?"

Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) now wants answers from the FAA. In a letter sent to Administrator Marion Blakey on February 2nd, Specter called Salamone's epic journey a "troubling incident."

Salamone's flight and the FAA's response "brings into question your agency's ability to adequately respond to a potential aviation threat of this magnitude," he wrote. The FAA promises a response sometime next month.

The 44-year old Salamone will be in court Tuesday for a hearing that will determine whether he is to stand trial on charges of reckless endangerment and risking a catastrophe. He has a history of public intoxication, after being arrested for DUI in 1989 and 1990. He was also arrested last November for lambasting employees of a restaurant in Limerick (PA) for refusing to serve him more drinks.

FMI: www.faa.gov