INCREDIBLE I WONDER WHERE THOSE BLACK HAWKS
WERE ON 9/11 WATCH, WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Cessna pilot feared he would be shot down
May 25, 2005

The pilot whose small plane flew over Washington this month and triggered a security scare that emptied the White House, Capitol and Supreme Court, said on Tuesday he thought he was going to be "shot out of the sky."

Homeland security and military aircraft, including two F-16s and a Black Hawk helicopter, were scrambled to intercept the Cessna 150 turboprop and escort it to an airport in nearby Maryland on May 11.

"That was very scary," pilot Hayden "Jim" Sheaffer said on the NBC Today Show program.

"After the second pass and the flares were fired I thought that we were going to get shot out of the sky."

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has revoked Sheaffer's licence for one year. Troy Martin, a student pilot at the controls, was not disciplined.

It was only the second licence revocation in the past year for Washington airspace violations, which occur twice a day on average, the FAA said. Other pilots have had their licences suspended for shorter periods.

On Monday, military jets intercepted a small plane that strayed into restricted airspace around Washington, but the incident triggered no frantic security response on the ground.

Sheaffer, of Lititz, Pennsylvania, will appeal the licence revocation. His lawyer, Mark McDermott said he believed Sheaffer was being made a scapegoat because of the publicity surrounding the evacuations.

"When I first saw the helicopter, I knew we were some place we weren't supposed to be," Sheaffer said, adding that he was unable to communicate on the radio frequency indicated by the Black Hawk pilot.>>>continued

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/05/24/1116700714115.html