Guess the fox is in charge of the henhouse...

http://rt.com/usa/faa-zone-exxon-employee-306/

Gump

This TFR stuff is getting REALLY old... Especially when it is driven by private industry and others.. like the CAP.. ..

Personally I would fly over the TFR at 1001 feet with the transponder squaking Mode A just to piss them off.. ..


Another way to address this crap is to have some media test the TFR's by busting them and see what shakes out in a court of law..

Makes no difference to us fixed wingers. What are the clearance rules normally for news copters? A mythbusters episode of Jaymie flying through a presidential tfr would be a hoot.

A thousand feet above the site to protect the support aircraft doesn't seem unreasonable to me. Happens all the time, over much larger areas, for fire fighting operations. I'm pretty sure (though I couldn't find a historical list to verify) that I've seen this for the worst of highway accidents as well.

I'm definitely not a big Exxon supporter, but the TFR itself doesn't seem unreasonable or unique IMO. Hell, that's pattern altitude. Surely the media can take excellent video from 1050 feet given the ridiculously high end rigs they have on their helicopters. So, even if Exxon is trying to hide something with this, they have done a pretty incompetent job!

rw2 wrote:A thousand feet above the site to protect the support aircraft doesn't seem unreasonable to me. Happens all the time, over much larger areas, for fire fighting operations. I'm pretty sure (though I couldn't find a historical list to verify) that I've seen this for the worst of highway accidents as well.

I'm definitely not a big Exxon supporter, but the TFR itself doesn't seem unreasonable or unique IMO. Hell, that's pattern altitude. Surely the media can take excellent video from 1050 feet given the ridiculously high end rigs they have on their helicopters. So, even if Exxon is trying to hide something with this, they have done a pretty incompetent job!

I have to agree that the media will have NO trouble getting great footage from 1,001 AGL over areas like this one. They've got some great equipment on their helicopters, at least from what I've seen in the past. Having been involved in aerial VIP protection in a wildfire zone at one point in the not-too-distant past, I can say that airspace can get quite (scarily) crowded over some disaster areas... we sure wouldn't have been there if we didn't have to be, and even as it was, I can't help but feel like we were getting in the way of the real work that needed to be done in that zone by the folks in the C130's and other firefighting aircraft.

With that said, I don't know how needed this particular TFR is... I'm just trying to see this from both sides of the issue.

Living in a major city in a political "swing" state, I can't help but notice how often we have TFRs popping up around here these days for political reasons. So, I can appreciate anyone's frustration with GA flying in an age of apparent enhanced security for EVERYTHING.

I am usually just a lurker on here.
But I have to put my two cents worth in. Let me start by saying I am not an Exxon fan either. But they do have people that truly care about the environment and don't want to harm it. There is enough absorbent out to clean up 100 spills of that size. Anymore it is every PE's job to protect and keep spills from occurring. If for no other reason economics. A simple 10 bbl spill in the middle of the dessert, can cost $100,000 to clean up. If you can't prevent that then you will not have a job long. That being said there is a lot of old equipment out there that not even the majors can afford to replace in a timely matter (or have the man power, even with the unemployment rate of today).
The Alaskan Pipeline would be so monitored today, that it wouldn't even be able to leak more than I could piss.
That being said as a pilot, I definitely see the TFR issue. However, if it was in my neck of the wood, I would be flying over it as well as half the people I know. That can't be safe for anyone in the air or on the ground. Like a none towered airport. Haha
Go ahead, I know I am going to take a beating for not being politically correct.