I’m not sure where this started, but here’s the gouge...
Lol! “Restricted airspace” is there to protect high level places and people - like the President. The President can go wherever he wants the aircraft to go.
Dh is a military pilot. He has two friends who fly for HMX-1. Once, while on one of many flights to New Orleans, the President told the pilots that he wanted to land (pointing out the window) “over there.” Given the still torn up condition of the said area, the pilots used some of their best maneuvering to place the a/c safely where the President wanted to walk around. If it can be done, then they do it.
If the President wants to do a fly over of the Kennedy Space Center, then that’s what they do. There are no restrictions on the President.
You’re coming into this discussion after it’s been turmed away from the original statement I made. In post #15, I posted:
“Of course the Marine was startled. He’s required by duty to stand at attention until the Commander in Chief is boarded. Obama broke protocol, like the idiot he is.
“And of course Obama saw the Washington Monument. The jagged flight plan of Marine One goes fairly close to the monument as it flies right around it coming and going, because of all the restricted air space in D. C.”
I was responding to the statement by Obama, as recorded by Tapper, that he saw the Washington Monument.
The flight path of Marine One scoots around the Washington Monument, as it follows a prescribed series of zigs and zags. That is its normal flight path every time.
That’s all this was originally about. But after a couple of challenges by xone, I find myself being chastised for, I suppose, making comments about helicopters even though I’ve never flown a helicopter. Apparently, there is no way anyone but a helicopter pilot could know any generalized facts about the normal flight path of Marine One.
(Except somebody who watches the National Geographic Channel, and sees a documentary on Marine One. Nah, not even someone who does that. Sheesh.)