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Drone Surprises Jetliner Pilot At LAX; Owner Sought In Investigation

Drone Surprises Jetliner Pilot At LAX; Owner Sought In Investigation

By Joseph Serna, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — A drone spotted earlier this month by a Canadian jetliner pilot near Los Angeles International Airport has become the subject of an investigation.

On Aug. 4, Los Angeles police said, the personal drone was spotted by the jetliner pilot as the remote-controlled craft was hovering about 10 miles east of LAX at 4,000 feet.

That would place it at an altitude outside Federal Aviation Administration guidelines for hobbyists’ drones and also within the airport’s Class B airspace, where aircraft need to have a transponder and two-way communication with air traffic controllers, federal officials said.

Last year, the FAA restricted drones from coming within five miles of airports.

The agency cited recent “reckless use of unmanned model aircraft near airports and involving large crowds of people” in its announcement of the policy shift, which comes as federal officials are trying to determine how to regulate private unmanned aircraft in U.S. airspace.

Los Angeles police learned of the drone when the airline pilot asked air traffic controllers if it was a police drone. The LAPD’s two drones are locked away in a federal building and have not been used.

Officials said the incident highlights concerns that better regulations are needed for the drones.

“Everyone is going to suffer because of a reckless pilot,” said LAPD Air Support Capt. Gary Walters. “You don’t expect to see one at 1,000 feet when you’re doing 130 mph going to an emergency call to the Coliseum.”

Police Department representatives are talking with FAA officials and local lawmakers about what can be done to bring existing laws up to date so they apply to drones, officials said.

AFP Photo/Saul Loeb

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Wyoming Is For Nature Lovers And Money Launderers

Rich people — especially ones that commit crimes — may no longer need to go to the Caribbean to park their cash and escape taxes. They can just go to Wyoming, where a lax approach toward newly incorporated businesses –“Somalia has higher standards,” as one expert told Reuters — has led to the creation of thousands of shell corporations.

The lack of rules have led to businesses like Wyoming Corporate Services, which is located in a small house near the state capitol in Cheyenne and has already created 2,000 shell companies. Clients can choose to list Gerald Pitts, director of Wyoming Corporate Services, as a director of their shell corporation, giving the owners the ability to mask their real name or address.

Of course, not all shell corporations are corrupt. But anonymity can allow those that are to break the law with impunity. Two of the corporations formed by Wyoming Corporate Services applied and received government contracts totaling over $715,000 after falsely claiming to be “women-owned,” “minority-owned,” and “Hispanic-owned.” If that wasn’t bad enough, they put American soldiers in danger by selling the Pentagon knock-off military vehicle components from Turkey.

Another shell corporation headquartered at the house is alleged to be owned by disgraced former Ukrainian prime minister Pavlo Lazarenko, who was named as the eighth-most corrupt official in the world by Transparency International in 2004. Lazarenko’s Wyoming company is allegedly the center of a vast international network of dummy corporations that controls $72 million worth of real estate in rural Ukraine. [Reuters Special Report]