TFR inside Class B?

[Bob Dingley]

TFRs within Class B are not unique. The ninth anniversery of KATRINA will be this month. The New Orleans Class B TRACON radar was among the casualties and was soon replaced with two AWACS. Tower freq was the CTAF for a while. Tower was re-manned sometime on the second day. KMSY never closed. KNEW was flooded out for a while.


Of course, a disaster TFR was put in place. Air traffic picked up. You saw it all on TV. KMSY was not a problem if you stayed above 1500' & VFR. LTG Honere' took charge and he was most appreciated. Then the local radio stations began pushing for President Bush to visit to "see for himself." He did a flyover day one and I thought that any more than that would be an interferance.


My fears were realized and he caved to pressure and eventualy visited N.O. about five times. I was on duty for three of those.So now we had the Class B with a disaster TFR, and a Presidential TFR to boot. Oh yeah, the Presidential was a moving TFR centered on his motorcade. All the while,we pilots had urgent stuff to do and did not always get the required authorizations and discreet Xpndr codes. I'm guessing that there were enough TFR violations to keep a Fighter Wing busy with intercepts. But there was not a one. TFR enforcement would have only added to the carnival atmosphere. Thankfuly, it all came off incident free like we knew what we were doing


Please don't push the president to show up.


Bob

[Mayhemxpc]

1997 I was the Air Operations Director for the KY portion of the disaster response for the Ohio River floods. We got a TFR established for the same reasons as N.O. Louisville (Standiford) is only Class C, so the analogy is not quite same as for a an airport with Class B. Anyway, I flew up and back along the river either the day or the day after we got the TFR established. (My prerogative. I booked myself on the flight officially to get eyes on target. More, it was to keep myself from going stir crazy in air ops.) I was amazed at the number of near misses I had while trying to do the visual assessment. The other airplanes knew about the TFR because they came in low -- real low -- and turned their transponders off. I should mention that regardless of the TFR, the whole area was within the Mode C veil. The only plane Louisville Approach saw or was talking to along the river was me.

So much for the effectiveness of TFR's for that purpose.

But I am sure nothing like that would ever happen today. Pilots are much too responsible…right?

[Mike M]

Thank you, Bob and Chris, for the "been there done that" answers. Seems to confirm my suspicion about the reason for a TFR in Class B. Belt and suspenders and sometimes the trousers still fall down.