It's tempting to say that before the September 11 terrorist attacks we had nearly total freedom to fly as we pleased in our national airspace. But that would be a delusion. Access to much of our airspace has not been unfettered for decades, and the right to fly in very large portions of airspace has come with a price. Now we are encumbered by temporary flight restrictions (TFR) that pop up at the government's whim anywhere in the country where certain elected officials travel, or where the government decides there is some sort of terrorist threat. We have an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) that touches no national border. The ADIZ, designed during the Cold War to identify incoming bombers, is now being used to keep citizens at bay. And worst of all, a federally owned and operated airport is off limits to all who fly for business or pleasure. That airport is Washington National, of course.
What is different about these affronts to airplane operators and pilots in this country is that for the first time a new dual category of citizen has been created. A few U.S. citizens can land at National, but the rest cannot. Even though many of us are willing to pay for access to airports and airspace, as we have in the past, we are denied the right to fly into National.
When I say that we have paid for access to airports and airspace for many years, I'm not talking about air traffic control user fees. What I mean is that we as pilots and airplane owners have paid to satisfy whatever requirements have been placed on those who wish to fly in certain airspace. There has been lots of grumbling and complaining at times about airspace access requirements, but at least we knew the cost and could decide for ourselves if access to those airports and airspace was worth the price.
Probably the granddaddy of all airspace access charges was the creation of the terminal control area (TCA), now renamed Class B, more than 30 years ago. The government decided-correctly in my view-that something had to be done to achieve more positive separation between airliners and general aviation airplanes flying VFR. The answer was the creation of the TCA airspace around seven of the busiest airline terminal areas. Any pilot who wished to fly in this new airspace must have a transponder with a Mode C encoder to automatically report altitude to the controller's radar. The VFR pilot must also maintain continuous radio contact with controllers while in the TCA airspace, and fly altitude and routing assigned by the controller. Student pilots flying solo were also banned from the TCA.
Creation of the TCAs brought the usual howls of protest from many general aviation pilots, and Washington lobbying groups pronounced, again, the end of general aviation flying. But they were wrong.
The reason the TCAs worked, and that Class B is accepted now as a normal course of general aviation flying near any busy airline airport, is that the TCAs helped to solve a problem and did it at a specific price. The problem was that the public will not tolerate collisions between airliners and general aviation airplanes. Nobody wants to see midairs involving any airplanes, but the flying public demands a much higher standard of safety for airlines, as it should. If collisions between airliners and general aviation airplanes had continued at the rate they occurred before the TCA creation, restrictions on VFR flying would have been much more severe.
The price we paid for the benefit the TCA delivered was to install a transponder and altitude encoder. That was not an insignificant expense in the early 1970s, but the cost of airspace access was clear. And pilots had an option. If you didn't want to pay for the transponder, the option was simply to stay out of TCA airspace.
