Tag: planes
No-Fly Zones Over Disney Parks Face New Scrutiny

No-Fly Zones Over Disney Parks Face New Scrutiny

By Matt Pearce, Los Angeles Times

The “Happiest Place on Earth” has some of the strictest airspace in America.

One day last month, an odd pair of security alerts appeared on the Federal Aviation Administration’s website, reminding pilots that they are not allowed to fly into two areas in Southern California and central Florida.

The sky over Disneyland in Anaheim and Walt Disney World in Orlando is “national defense airspace.” Intentionally violating Mickey and Minnie’s airspace, the alerts warn, could result in interception, interrogation and federal prosecution.

These no-fly zones are known as temporary flight restrictions, like the ones that surround the president when he travels or those put in place above Ferguson, Mo., during protests over the summer. Wildfires, air shows, and large sporting events regularly get temporary flight restrictions.

Yet there is nothing temporary about the restrictions over the Disney properties. Such limits do not exist over competing theme parks such as Universal Studios in Los Angeles or Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, Calif.

The Disney restrictions have been in place since 2003, thanks to a provision quietly slipped into a massive congressional spending bill weeks before the Iraq war. Defense and counterterrorism officials did not appear to ask for the Disney protections, which were instead urged by at least one Disney lobbyist, according to an Orlando Sentinel investigation in 2003.

The restrictions effectively ended a war between Disney and aerial advertisers who had buzzed over the parks for years before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The FAA’s leader, Michael P. Huerta, testified before Congress last year that if not for the 2003 law, he would eliminate no-fly zones over Disney properties. An FAA spokeswoman said last week that the agency also would like to take a closer look at no-fly zones over sporting events, which were made permanent by the 2003 law.

Defenders of the zones have said the Disney parks merit special protection because of their importance to American culture and the large crowds they draw. Critics say that the zones, which each cover a three-mile radius, would be useless against a true terrorist attack and that the restrictions instead mostly harm pilots who tow advertising banners.

“Banner towers used to make money with their banner tows around Disneyland; now they’re not allowed to. … People can’t take aerial photography shots,” said Mark Skinner, owner of Anaheim Helicopters. But “you can fly (around) Knott’s Berry Farm, Six Flags, no big deal,” he said.

According to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, nearly 100 aerial advertising firms went out of business after Congress codified the no-fly zones over the Disney parks and sporting events. (Pilots have been especially critical of the sporting event no-fly zones, which may last just a few hours but are implemented thousands of times a year.)

Craig Spence, vice president of operations and international affairs for the association, said the restrictions served no real security purpose.

Skinner said even if terrorists attacked Disneyland, no one was actively patrolling the park’s airspace. “If something bad were to happen, how quickly could they get something up there? Not quick enough,” he said. “A plane can cover three miles in literally a minute.”

Richard W. Bloom, director of terrorism, intelligence and security studies at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Ariz., said although the no-fly zones were “certainly not foolproof,” they “definitely have a deterring value” as one of many layers of security designed to protect American airspace.

A Disney spokeswoman said the no-fly zones protected the public. “We believe the airspace restrictions over large gathering places like sports stadiums and our theme parks continue to make sense for enhancing public safety,” Cathi Killian said.

When the no-fly zones were approved, however, some of Disney’s public remarks suggested the company was not solely concerned about terrorist attacks.

“The sole and exclusive motivation for seeking these restrictions is for the safety and enjoyment of our guests,” Disney spokeswoman Leslie Goodman told the Orlando Sentinel after the restrictions were created. But Goodman added that “enjoyment” included keeping out “banner ads from trial lawyers” and pilots “buzzing the parks.”

The no-fly zones have been challenged in court, without success.

A Christian group, the Family Policy Network, sued the government in 2003 to allow a pilot to fly a banner that read “Jesus Christ: Hopeforhomosexuals.com” over Walt Disney World during Gay Day. In its court filing, the group argued that the no-fly zone was unfair because Disney didn’t own the airspace and that other theme parks or potential terrorism targets, such as downtown Chicago, didn’t have similar zones.

In response, government attorneys mounted a strident defense of the Disney no-fly zones, saying terrorists could plow planes into crowds of tourists, drop bombs on them, or spray them with chemical or biological agents.

“No building or wall protects bare flesh from the impact of even a small plane. No window or duct tape protects lungs from the invasion of airborne chemicals or germs,” wrote two federal attorneys, one from the Justice Department in Washington and the other an assistant U.S. attorney in Florida. Disney’s place in the American psyche, they argued, warranted the three-mile protective space.

A federal judge threw out the Family Policy Network’s arguments, writing that combating terrorism required “unquestioning adherence” to Congress’ action.

More than a decade later, the attorney who fought the Disney no-fly zone, Steve Crampton, chuckled when he was reminded of the government’s arguments. “Reading it now, it’s kind of a ‘you’ve got to be kidding me, right?’ reaction. Give me a break,” said Crampton, chief counsel for the American Center for Constitutional Rights.

“In the past 10, 12 years since those cases were argued, we’ve seen no further terrorist attacks of the type that took place at the World Trade Center and no real threat in these fly-over zones. I would say, today, that the case for protecting Disney is even weaker than it was when we argued those cases,” Crampton said.

Photo via Andy Castro via Flickr

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Obama Announces Plans For New Ebola Screening Of Airline Passengers

Obama Announces Plans For New Ebola Screening Of Airline Passengers

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske and Michael Muskal, Los Angeles Times

The Obama administration is developing additional screening protocols for airline passengers both overseas and in the United States to control infectious diseases such as Ebola, President Barack Obama said Monday.
After meeting with his senior health, homeland security and national security advisers, Obama told reporters that in the wake of the first Ebola case diagnosed in the U.S., officials would study increasing screening plans.
“We’re also going to be working on protocols to do additional passenger screening both at the source and here in the United States,” the president said, without offering details. New measures could be announced shortly, an administration official said.
“I consider this a top national security priority,” Obama said.
He spoke after Texas officials said they were making good progress in monitoring those who had been in contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian diagnosed with Ebola in Dallas last month. Also Monday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry called for more screening at the borders in the wake of the Duncan case.
At a televised news conference to announce his new 17-member task force to deal with infectious diseases, Perry said federal officials should tighten screening procedures at all U.S. points of entry. Screeners would take travelers’ temperatures and conduct other assessments to determine their overall health.
Duncan did not have a fever when he left Liberia on Sept. 19, but developed symptoms days after arriving in Dallas. He first sought medical care the night of Sept. 25 but was sent home with antibiotics. When his condition worsened on Sept. 28, he was rushed back to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, where he is in isolation and in critical but stable condition.
He has been receiving an experimental treatment using the antiviral drug brincidofovir.
In Dallas, Texas Health Commissioner David Lakey told reporters of continuing efforts to monitor those who may have come in contact with Duncan or with his secondary contacts. Lakey said no symptoms have developed among those being monitored, not even among the 10 people considered to be in the high-risk group. Those at high risk include the family and friends who stayed with Duncan at a Dallas apartment when he had symptoms. The low-risk group, mainly those who encountered people in the high-risk group, has 38 people, Lakey said.
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said the second phase of the apartment cleanup has been completed, including disposal of most of Duncan’s personal items, which could be infectious.
Meanwhile, a freelance journalist who had been working for NBC News arrived in Omaha, Neb., to be treated for Ebola, which he contracted in Liberia. Ashoka Mukpo was taken to the Nebraska Medical Center, where he will be kept in isolation. Mukpo, who became ill last week, is the fifth American with Ebola to return to the U.S. for treatment during the outbreak.
Mukpo was able to walk off the plane on his own Monday before being loaded onto a stretcher for the ambulance ride to the hospital, his father, Dr. Mitchell Levy, said at a televised news conference. Levy told reporters that his son wanted to help the people of Liberia because he lived there for two years while working with a nonprofit.
It was not known how Mukpo became infected, but Levy said it may have happened when his son helped clean a vehicle in which someone had died.
In Spain, officials announced that a nurse who helped care for two priests infected with Ebola has tested positive for the virus — becoming the first person known to have contracted Ebola outside West Africa. She was described as in stable condition. According to the World Health Organization, more than 3,400 people have died during the current outbreak, the worst on record.

AFP Photo/ Carl de Souza

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Melanoma Risk Is Higher For Flight Crews That Work At 40,000 Feet

Melanoma Risk Is Higher For Flight Crews That Work At 40,000 Feet

By Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times

Attention pilots and flight attendants: For your safety, please fasten your seat belts, note the location of the aircraft’s emergency exits — and be sure to apply plenty of sunscreen to reduce your risk of melanoma.

When it comes to the risks of flying, skin cancer may not be the first health hazard that comes to mind. But a new study in JAMA Dermatology says that pilots are 2.22 times more likely than folks in the general population at large to be diagnosed with melanoma. For members of the cabin crew, the risk was 2.09 times greater.

Melanoma is the sixth most common cancer in the United States, according to the National Cancer Institute. Although other types of skin cancer are diagnosed more frequently, melanoma is more likely to be fatal, the American Cancer Society says. An estimated 76,100 Americans will be diagnosed with melanoma this year, and about 9,710 will die from it.

Dozens of studies have examined melanoma risk in flight crews, since working at 40,000 feet means greater exposure to cosmic rays and ultraviolet radiation. For the new study, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco combed through data on 266,431 participants in 19 published studies to see whether the danger was real — and if so, how big it was.

They found that for pilots and flight attendants, the risk of developing melanoma was more than double the risk seen in people who worked on the ground. However, only pilots faced an increased risk of death from the cancer — their mortality risk was 83 percent greater than for those in the general population. (For those who worked in the main cabin, the risk of dying from melanoma was actually 10 percent lower.)

The study authors noted that exposure to cosmic radiation is not likely to be a factor for melanoma. Many studies have measured the cosmic radiation that finds its way into a plane, and the amount is “consistently below the allowed dose limit of 20 mSv/y,” or 20 millisieverts per year. (A typical American is exposed to about 3.6 mSv per year, according to this report from the Environmental Protection Agency.)

UVB radiation probably isn’t the culprit either, since fewer than 1 percent of this radiation can penetrate aircraft windshields, the researchers wrote.

UVA, on the other hand, can penetrate glass, and the higher a plane flies, the more intense UVA radiation becomes. When planes fly above clouds or snow-covered mountains, they are exposed to even more UVA reflected from below, the researchers wrote. Studies of cells in lab dishes and in animals show that UVA damages DNA, causing the mutations that can lead to cancer.

It’s possible that when they are on the ground, pilots and flight attendants are bigger fans of activities that would increase their risk of melanoma, such as frequenting tanning salons. So far, there’s no hard data suggesting that this is the case, the UC San Francisco researchers wrote.

Instead, they noted that multiple studies have found that the more hours a member of the flight crew spends in the air, the more likely he or she is to be diagnosed with melanoma.

AFP Photo/Saul Loeb

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FAA Bans U.S. Airlines From Flying Over Syria

FAA Bans U.S. Airlines From Flying Over Syria

Washington (AFP) — The U.S. aviation regulator Monday ordered airlines based in the United States to stop flying over Syria, citing a “serious potential threat” to civil planes, including armed groups with anti-aircraft weapons.

“Based on an updated assessment of the risk associated with such operations and the lack of any requests from operators wishing to fly in this airspace, we believe it prudent to prohibit U.S. operators from flying into, out of and over Syria,” the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.

The FAA’s previous so-called Notice to Airmen had strongly advised U.S. operators against flying over Syria.

“The ongoing armed conflict and volatile security environment in Syria poses a serious potential threat to civil aviation,” the new notice said.

“Armed extremist groups in Syria are known to be equipped with a variety of anti-aircraft weapons which have the capability to threaten civilian aircraft.”

It noted that opposition groups have already shot down Syrian military aircraft over the conflict that began nearly three and a half years ago.

The ban affects all U.S. companies and commercial operators.

The FAA has also imposed a ban on US planes over Iraq, effective August 8.

Syria, like Iraq, is on a path that carriers can take when traveling between Europe and the Middle East or Asia.

AFP Photo/Saul Loeb

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