Canadian Cessna Visits Rochester, NY

Canadian Cessna Visits Rochester, NY...by way of nuclear power plant.

A Cessna 152 piloted by two men flew into United States airspace and landed at the Greater Rochester International Airport. The two men were allegedly flying from Toronto to Kingston and apparently took a wrong turn. For some reason, rather then flying east from Toronto to Kingston (or west going back), they flew south for nearly 100 miles over the open water of Lake Ontario.  The trip included a detour through the airspace surrounding the Ginna Nuclear Power plant.

There was no radio communication between the plane and air traffic control. The two men in the plane, described as Canadians of Indian decent, were questioned and released. Click here for an article on this from the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.

I'm not going to buy into the proposal that this was simply an accident or mistake. Could this be another dry run testing our response to events? We've seen other events that looked like dry run probing in the recent past. See Dutch Good Example of Anti Terrorism (August 31, 2010 Mitigation Journal).

I don't know why I'm surprised by this event. After all, NORAD decided not to intercept Russian bomber flights into U.S./Canadian airspace because they were "just training missions"...see NORAD v. Cessna (July 12, 2010 Mitigation Journal). But, then again, how bad can a Cessna be? After all, it's just a Cessna. Although I seriously doubt that a Cessna could damage a nuclear power plant, we should remember the situation of not too long ago where a disturbed person flew his Cessna into a building that housed a regional IRS office. See An Attack by Any Other Name (February 18, 2010 Mitigation Journal).

Did I mention September is National Preparedness Month?