Planes, Trains, And U-Haul Trucks

If you were to decide to worry about protecting yourself and your family from the threat of terrorism, what vehicle do you think would pose the greatest risk to your safety—planes, trains, or U-Haul trucks?

If you guessed that aircraft pose a greater risk than U-Hauls, you’d be wrong.

This issue forms the basis of my consternation over the government’s and general public’s obsession with “no-fly” zones and outright discrimination against the owners and pilots of general aviation aircraft.

You do remember that not one single Piper, Beachcraft, or Cessna was involved in the 9/11 attacks, don’t you?

I was watching FOX News yesterday when the initial reports came out of Washington DC detailing the evacuation of the White House and the Capitol building because of the approach of an inbound airplane. Although the whole situation was defused in a matter of minutes, it just further points out the difficulty of defending critical areas from the threat of light general aviation aircraft and I think that the actual level of threat needs to be totally reassessed.

In addition to Washington DC and Disney World, I just learned that the FAA continues to restrict all airspace within 3 miles and under three thousand feet of all "well attended events." Heck, they close down the whole state of Georgia to private pilots when the president visits Atlanta. You have no idea how hard it is to keep up with no fly zones when you already have so much to worry about when flying an airplane.

Everyone pictures F-16’s and F-18’s scrambling from Andrews Air Force base and running out to intercept the offending airplane and either shoot it down or else escort it back to some airfield so they can strip search the pilots. Certainly the fighters can handle the “shooting down” part of the exercise, but since a Cessna 152 cruises at about 110 MPH, about all that the F16/F18 fighters can do is scare the crap out of the Cessna pilots—the fighters stall at about that same speed the Cessna crusies at. That’s why they also scrambled a Blackhawk helicopter to do the actual escorting because it could fly slow enough to reasonably keep up with the Cessna during the diversion.

Here it the thing that you should really be worrying about rather than if a vehicle has wings or rubber tires—useful load capacity.

A single engine Cessna like most of us can afford to own or rent can only haul about 420 pounds. This means with one lard ass pilot like myself on board, you have less than two hundred pounds of capacity left over to carry little necessiary things like FUEL and luggage if your lucky enough to be staying over night. If you can fly a Piper Cherokee or Seminole your useful load is only increased to around 1000 pounds, thus you can haul more people and fuel and luggage.

Now let’s look at the U-Haul Super26 rental truck. It can legally haul 6430 pounds—probably more if you’re doing something illegal like delivering explosives to the oval office in the White House. Twelve times more than the Cessna 152.

And what is the requirement to get the Cessna out of the parking lot? A pilots license and the skill the fly it.

Getting the U-Haul out of the lot only requires a driver’s license and a $100 deposit. The last time I checked you didn’t even need a credit card to rent one.

So I ask you—what are you going to worry about as you go about your lovely day working or chasing your rug rats around the house?

I say that we start looking a little closer at who’s renting and driving delivery trucks rather than scrambling fighters and scaring the crap out of student pilots.