Pilots who fly solo on a small plane sure have the risk of passing out. If he doesn’t fall over the controls and if the plane is on auto pilot it will probably fly until it finds a mountain on its way or runs out of fuel (whatever comes first). Now… what if the plane invades restricted airspace? Would he have his life shortened even further by a missile or something like that?
They’ll probably scramble fighters to intercept the plane. They’ll do a visual inspection and they’ll see that no one is moving in the cockpit, at which point they probably won’t shoot it down.
A similar incident happened earlier this year. A plane flew over restricted airspace in DC. It was intercepted by F-16s. When the pilot didn’t respond, the fighters continued to escort the plane until it flew out over the ocean, ran out of fuel, and crashed.
Things like that happen fairly frequently in real life by mistake or pilot health crisis so there isn’t much need to speculate. The military scrambles the alert fighter jets to intercept them, make visual contact, attempt to make radio contact and see what the deal is in general. The fighters are armed and prepared to fire but I don’t believe they have ever needed to use them in a case like that. There is no point even if it started as a malicious act because the fighters can nullify the threat instantly at any time if they need to.
This has happened a number of times through health issues alone. Most recently, a private plane bound from Jamaica to New York became unresponsive over the Caribbean so the military scrambled fighters because they were about to pass through Cuban air space. The husband and wife owners and pilots were both dead most likely due to cabin depressurization issues and the fighter pilots were able to see that by flying close enough to see them slumped over.
A very similar thing happened with golf star Payne Stuart and his LearJet. The plane also became unresponsive and the fighters determined that everyone was dead because the windows were frosted over. They let it fly until it crashed when it ran out of fuel hours later but the only reason they would have shot it down is if it was going to crash into a populated area (it didn’t).
Lots of small plane pilots have violated some seriously restricted airspace by mistake including that over the U.S. Capitol and the White House. At least one pilot caused a Space Shuttle launch to be postponed by flying through temporarily restricted air space during the launch window. That lapse of judgment or complete lack of judgement will get you into a whole lot of legal trouble, probably make you lose you pilots license and cost you a whole lot of money but you generally won’t get a missile powerful enough to take down a 747 shoved up your exhaust pipe just for that as long as the situation can be controlled by the fighter escorts.
the aliens, who have taken over Area 51 and are shape shifters who appear as humans, would bring it down with a tractor beam.
I used to fly fighters out of Nellis AFB in Las Vegas. About every year while I was there some light plane would blunder through Area 51. In all the cases I heard about the pilots were always conscious but clueless. And not listening to any radio.
They’d be intercepted and followed to their destination. The usual interceptor was a UH60 helo with a team of very unpleasant USAF security / infantry on board. It was plenty fast enough to keep up with lightplanes and could land immediately wherever and whenever the lightplane did. Arrest was immediate & prosecution was swift & aggressive.
Yes, we’d “scramble” a jet if the intruder was too fast for a helo. But no entity on Nellis routinely kept jets cocked for rapid reaction, so the “scramble” was relatively leisurely. Then again, once airborne we could go 900mph faster than even a fast private plane; that makes up for their half-hour head start in about 5 minutes.
Whatever was/is in Area 51 (I have no clue about then or now), it’s underground or in a hangar except for a few brief minutes. No need to shoot folks down since they’ve got plenty of time to get back in hiding before the slow-mover finally chugs close enough to see something “interesting”.
That’s purely a Star Trek fictional device.
They would use 1920s style death rays.
I think that the UH60 Helo should be called HELLO. Something like… HELLO, I HAVE GUNS.
It would be more friendly.
Actually, going back in time a little to the Nixon administration and the Western Whitehouse just south of San Clemente CA. It was also prohibited area.
That prohibition got violated all the time (unintentional most likely) and I never heard of anyone getting shot down for it. I’m sure they got a nasty gram from the FAA asking them to appear and discuss the matter.
Mistakes are tolerably frequent; incapacitated pilots are really rather rare.
In addition to the cases you mention, LSU’s football coach, Bo Rein, died in a somewhat similar incident in 1980.
I know that guy - or at least, a guy who held up a shuttle launch. An investigation wound up determining that his flight was entirely legal. For subsequent launches, the closed airspace was expanded.
Anyone give a guess if, as I heard, the missiles around the reactor in Dimona, Israel, are on automatic within some critical area?
I don’t know that there exists such a thing as an unmanned antiaircraft missile system. “Automatic” things might develop a tendency to fire when you don’t want them to and not fire when you do. You want a human near the “fire” button - unreliable, sure, but at least you can put them on trial (or assign them to distant duty to keep them away from investigators) when things go wrong.