Hijacking Scare Sends Air Force, FBI Scrambling

Hijacking Scare Sends Air Force, FBI Scrambling

POSTED: 9:59 pm EDT May 13, 2006
UPDATED: 12:02 am EDT May 14, 2006

SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. -- A small plane sending a message that it had been hijacked after violating Patrick Air Force Base airspace and flying near Walt Disney World caused members of the FBI, The Seminole County Sheriff's Office and Air Force to scramble to reach the aircraft Saturday, according to Local 6 News.

Authorities said pilot Wayne Lukens violated Patrick Air Force Base airspace by flying less than one mile west of the facility.

When air traffic controllers tried to reach Lukens as he flew over Seminole County, the response was a signal indicating that the Cessna had been hijacked, according to Local 6 News.

A military helicopter and sheriff's plane followed as the it flew into Orange County, near Walt Disney World before landing at Orlando-Sanford International Airport.

http://www.local6.com/news/9211951/detail.html

Yeah, (the pilot and passenger) seemed surprised," Seminole County Sheriff's Office chief pilot Steve Farris said. "They seemed like they were compliant and were like, 'Wow, what is all this about?' They said they thought they were squawking the normal code. So, it was either a mechanical problem or some type of mistake."

The owner of the plane said the mistake was caused by a technical malfunction.

"We had an equipment malfunction on my aircraft," Falcon Flight School representative Matt Johnson said. "Seminole County Sheriff, the FBI and TSA, everybody had to get involved because they thought the plane was being hijacked."

The Seminole County Sheriff's Office said the pilot was at fault because he dialed in an incorrect code that sent the message that the plane was being hijacked, Local 6 News reported.
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This reminds me of an airspace infringement in DC awhile back....

The Transponder is a device on most planes that transmits a 4 digit code. When you communicate with ATC they give you a code to dial into the transponder, so they know which dot on their screeen you are. You dial in one digit at a time. (1000's, 100's, 10's, 1's)

There are a few codes that are reserved, in hopes that pilots might subtly cue controllers about trouble. The "hijack" code is one of these. This is all well and good, except that in some cases it is possible to accidentally, and momentarily, "pass through" one of these reserved codes. For example, if you were using code 2000, and were told by ATC to use code 2020, you would dial in 2010 before getting to 2020. If 2010 was reserved, there could be a problem.

I was warned about this during my flight instruction, as it's easier to do than you might imagine.

Not that it wouldn't also be easy to do by someone who wanted to create a diversion. I'm just saying it could have been a blunder.

http://www.lukensphotography.com/

The Unofficial Disney Wedding Guide named him photographer of the year for his photos of weddings at the theme park.

I get the impression that the photographer is the father of the scientist.

Why? Could they shoot it down?

Bastards.

People screw up and fly over it all the time. It's right next to a public beach, literally right ON the beach in areas.



On the left, the water is the ocean; on the right, the Banana River. The picture of the beach is right near a surfing spot called the Shark Pit, and no one minds the dead pier. And that is NOT Seminole County. It's Brevard County. I was born and grew up (till age 13) there. It's also the county that Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral call home.

It's also the last base I was stationed before getting out of the USAF. Beautiful base.

The article references a representative of Falcon Flight-Sanford, Matt Johnson, the owner of the plane in question. I googled him and wasn't finding anything until I hit upon a message thread from Nov '04. RV List is for builders/pilots of RV kit planes.

If you search the page for 'falcon' you find this:



A Matt Johnson writes to this list. Search the page for his name and you get:



Go to the site in his sig, www.rv7a.com, and you'll see his page about building a kit plane. If you check out The Builders link and read about Matt you find this:



AltaPacific, based in Fresno, does all sorts for various industries including the government. I can't find much else about AltaPacific except that they're partnered under Citrix Systems -- I'm unsure if Citrix is just a marketing type firm or something more, perhaps someone familiar with the IT industry can clarify the relationship.

This in turn is interesting because Citrix Systems was on the DHS's Industry Day attendee list for August 16, 2005. Just so you see where I'm going with this, MZM, Inc is also included on that list.

:tinfoilhat: :tinfoilhat: :tinfoilhat:

Now I want to warn that I made a leap of -- well, faith and geography in linking Matt Johnson, owner of the plane in question and representative of Falcon Flight (FL), to Matt Johnson, RV plane builder/pilot and head of software & security at AltaPacific, Fresno (CA). "Matt Johnson" is not a unique name by any means; there are undoubtedly more than a few in America who are pilots. It's just the RV-List reference to to Falcon Flight members and that name showing up there, connected further on to a company that appears it might have some access to the DHS, that struck me as perhaps a bit more than coincidental.

So...?

And ya know - with bushbastard in charge of things it is no wonder we are looking more into detail on such stories. The MSM sucks with news - News is like a box of shit, you always know what you are gonna get.

And typical that it takes a DUer to do it, instead of a reporter looking into it
and informing us.

Just as they did in the old days, reporters these days get paid to cover stories.

It's a pity though that they changed the meaning of "cover".