FAA mandates no-fly zone over conventions

The Hill ^ | July 13, 2016 | Melanie Zanona

[Biggirl]

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has mandated that the skies over the presidential nominating conventions will be a no-fly zone. The FAA has warned pilots to give the Republican National Convention in Cleveland and the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia a 34.5-mile radius.

[Hulka]

Schedules airline flights to/from an airport are under ATC control. No problem. No issue.

The NOTAM is to restrict media and joy-riding minions clogging the airspace and causing an unsafe operating environment.

[Hulka]

So, the states would set their own airspace rules and regulations?

[Salgak]

DNC is at Wells Fargo Center. 6.3 miles from Philadelphia International Airport. . .

[Amendment10]

"So, the states would set their own airspace rules and regulations?"

Yes, until the states decided that it would work better to delegate to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to do so.

In fact, Congress should have successfully petitioned the states for an appropriate federal aviation amendment to the Constitution before establishing the FAA, the incompetent, post-17th Amendment ratification Congress failing to do so.

[Orbiter]

It's 34.5 statute miles which converts to 30 nautical miles.

[CFIIIMEIATP737]

Amendment 10, I love your conservative interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. But from a technical aspect, aviation needs to be under federal, not state, regulation. This is true for a host of reasons.

First would be treaties with other countries for operating in each other’s airspace and technical safety standards for the aircraft and crews. It would be unwieldy for New York and Florida to have different standards.

Second would be air traffic control. The coordination between enroute air traffic control, especially for geographically smaller states, would be nightmarish. At this time there are eleven enroute air traffic control centers for the United States, not fifty.

Next would be standardization of aircraft manufacture and pilot licensing. I could go on and on.

Referring back to Mr. Hulka’s comments, whether you agree or disagree, if you ask an FAA employee where the get their authority, they will refer to the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.

[Amendment10]

"But from a technical aspect, aviation needs to be under federal, not state, regulation."

Thank you for your post. I agree with you for the reasons that you indicated.

However …

Note that from the time that aviation was born, there has never been anything stopping the states from amending the Constitution to give the feds the power to regulate aviation.

The problem is that low-information citizens, including the likewise low-information politicians that citizens elect to federal and state offices, have not been vigilant with respect to making sure that the federal government expands its powers with the constitutionally required consent of the Constitution’s Article V state supermajority.

Many times Sometimes I think that citizens can sleep in the bed of unconstitutionally big federal government that they have made for themselves.