A total of eight general aviation aircraft violated the Bedminster, New Jersey, Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) over Trump National Golf Club this past weekend. There were five incursions on Saturday (June 20) and three more on Sunday, one of which resulted in a fighter intercept. President Trump spent the weekend at his golf resort, prompting the TFR. He returned to the White House on Sunday in preparation of announcing the bombing of Iran’s nuclear assets.
The TFR was the 12th imposed over Bedminster since he took office in January, according to a spokesperson for the 601st Air Operations Center of the U.S. Air Force. The Air Force unit plans, directs and assesses air operations for NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command). As reported by the Palm Beach Daily News, there have been more than two dozen similar violations by GA aircraft breaching TFRs over Trump’s Mar-a-Lago retreat in Florida since he took office in January.
In a response to the newspaper, an Air Force spokesman said, “Our layered defense network, which includes radar, satellites, and fighter aircraft, allows us to quickly identify and respond to any potential threats. NORAD maintains aircraft on alert across the country, ready to address any situation, and routinely secures airspace over TFRs, including the VIP TFR that was active over Bedminster, New Jersey. We consistently remind pilots to diligently verify all FAA NOTAMs [notices to airmen], particularly in areas like Bedminster, N.J., and Mar-A-Lago, Florida.”
Eight TFR busts in one weekend? Sorry Mark but eight TFR busts in one weekend indict the TFR program infinitely more than than they indict GA! How about a headline which reads “NJ and Florida TFR Busts Expose Need to Rethink Airspace Ownership”.
Frankly it’s time for AvWeb and other aviation rags to grow some balls and start advocating for reclamation of airspace which belongs to GA rather than accuse GA of marring its own public image because TFRs have gotten out of hand. By remaining silent we can choose Chinese style total government ownership of airspace, or by our vocal advocacy we can choose to retain ownership of US airspace by the people. Which will it be AvWeb editorial staff?
So, they’re not actually TEMPORARY. They permanently follow VIP politicians around using up way more of the national airspace than really necessary and they protect…somebody I guess… from the threat of tiny aircraft because on 9/11 airliners were used as weapons. The airliners don’t need to modify their procedures. And this somehow makes sense to some…
An Air Force spokesman meant to say “Our layered defense network, which includes radar, satellites, fighter aircraft, tankers, and helicopters, allows us to quickly identify and respond to old guys who learned to fly long before GPS flying planes built long before I was born who didn’t read the NOTAM despite AOPA’s diligent spamming of their email inbox about it.”
AOPA and others need to be aggressively fighting TFRs. The TFRs tend to be overly broad and disruptive to GA. Lee
Is that what those BULLSEYE maps are? I thought they were supposed to help threat agents locate the VIPs. That’s what it looks like, anyway.
We are in the outer circle for the Bedminster one. I totally sucks. While some people say it’s not that bad, just file a flight plan and get a code. It’s totally BS. It completely shuts down a few airports. I won’t be surprised if they go out of business. It has been almost every weekend with another one this weekend. He just doesn’t give two craps about any of this or anyone.
VIP TFRs are not going away. However, the sanctions against violating pilots will increase with all these busts. I haven’t read recently of airline or business aviation TFR busts.
This, exactly.
To my knowledge, there has never been a single credible threat from these post-9/11 TFR busts. All they really do is announce where and when the “VIP” will be. Especially with things escalating across the globe, I’d be more concerned about announcing the when and where to our adversaries who may take the opportunity some day to launch a military strike at the center of one of these TFRs. The next terrorist or military threat will not come from where it last came from and where we are still looking; it will come from where we aren’t looking.
So maybe an even better headline would be “NJ and Florida TFR Busts Expose Strategic Danger of VIP TFRs”.
It’s impossible to bust one on an IFR flight plan, which I recommend, but even that traffic, not to mention ATC, have a huge headache every time one pops up. And it’s not efficient. Maybe someone who knows more about efficiency could take a look at it.
It’s just the aircraft that pose no actual threat that need to worry about busting it…
It’s not about actual threats, like terrorism. It’s obviously just theater. Helping the masses, and reps in congress, feel better by distracting them from more important stuff.
We had to complain about how broken the NOTAM system is for 30 years before anyone took us seriously. Skip AOPA. They are part of the problem.
Complain directly to your reps in congress.
When is the aviation community going to start pushing back against the excessive number of TFRs that have become commonplace and in some cases perpetual, and that infringe on our ability and right to use public airspace? There is no legal justification for busting a TFR (ignorance of the law, and all that), but when they pop up without warning there is plenty of moral excuse. The legal and political pushback against the excessive number of TFRs has been minimal at best. AOPA and EAA, I’m looking at you. The constitutional basis and justification for each of these needs to be evaluated, and there needs to be a more robust checks and balances system that prevents unnecessary and inordinately intrusive TFRs from being issued in the first place.
Absolutely. THIS. The airspace belongs to the people, and there needs to be a more substantial reason for shutting it down besides “a VIP wants to go play some golf”.
And what about us sailplane (glider) pilots? We don’t file flight plans for circling in thermals where ever they may exist. We’re just wiped off the map and out of the sky. This ruins our sport financially and flight wise, every single weekend of the soaring season for the next four years.
Maybe it’s time for Trump to take up tennis.
Does Trump really feel for the little guy when the TFR around Bedminster basically chokes off the vital weekend revenue for Van Sant airport?
It’s not just presidential TFRs, they pop up over every sporting event, forest fire, Vice President travel, Super Bowl, etc. Ever since 911, the government can form a TFR at the drop of a hat. The threat is overstated and the local economic impact isn’t worth the squeeze. AOPA is not your friend, and it’s not going to solve this problem.
Another reason one should think about whom they vote for .
“When is the aviation community starting to push…”
I rarely ever laugh out loud while reading. The so-called aviation community can currently not remotely agree on wheter its daylight or dark outside. Instead, we are a greatly (nearly irreparably) damaged and divided bunch of first world luxury people attacking each other over which clown currently occupies the White House…
This community is barely a shade of its former self. Contracting the issue of TFR’s out to any of the three or 4 letter advocacy groups (in essence voting by proxy) hasn’t worked for several decades and its not going to start working now, by some miraculous wonder.
Two attempts on currently sitting president. Threats everywhere. I bet my bum the SS is on red alert and preventing another attack on Trump is dead front center with those, tasked to protect him.
Trump himself gives no rats behind about which flight school, business or charter outfit has to go down the drain, most of these people have no remote concept or interest in who has his privileges revoked based on their need for recreation and relaxing.
The best you can expect is that the current dick-swinging contest doesn’t further escalate, causing a total meltdown.
Read the damn NOTAM, file the damn flightplan or do what you have to, but don’t count on surviving a direct attack by a FA18.
I’m sorry. I tried, but I can’t quite tease out what you’re trying to convey. Do you agree with the current state of security theatre? Do you think we should just leave well enough alone? That the security need actually justifies the current system?
I’m in total agreement that we shouldn’t contract this issue out to the advocacy groups, and the only way we’re going to get any movement on this is by either contacting our representatives personally, or by directly attacking the TFR system itself via court action regarding the overreach and (my opinion) unconstitutional implementation. The only tangentially pertinent lawsuit that I’ve been able to find was one filed by Infowars over flight restrictions over a border TFR. Everyone else seems to either agree with the TFRs or they aren’t willing to actively oppose them, economic and liberty interests be damned.
I am sorry for the lack of clarity. My personal opinion on the current state of security theater is entirely negative, yet - as relevant as anyone elses.
Of course I have realized and accepted that the people who decide these things are above my paygrade/ outside my level of influence. I am a pro GA/BA person with two decades of trying to unite people and with lots of aviation advocacy work behind me.
Thats called activism today… without the 200K/ Year salary.
One of the other realisms is, that we have had two attempts on currently sitting president and I am willing to bet, eyes and ears are closed to common sense/ adjustments or easements. There is no collective bargaining, no feedback is being sought and advocacy groups with lobbying duties in Washington probably have their hands full, trying to get these criminals to pay attention to anything.
Hence: Read these NOTAMs… and expect nothing but brute power and control excercises on fairly innocent pilots, in case someone looses their cool…
I live in the PNW and the most common TFR’s around here are for fire fighting; needed and appreciated. I’ve often thought that most of the other TRF’s , especially for VIP travel, are a bit of a joke in terms of threat mitigation. I remember a story some years ago when a New York Yankees pitcher (?Corey Liddell) crashed into a New York apartment building in a Cirrus killing himself and a passenger; the apartment building sustained a scorch mark.
Its pretty safe to assume that a government apparatus which does not hesitate to send the military to Los Angeles, won’t even blink about ordering any TFR violating aircraft shot down. All else would be naive. We do not enjoy a very stable or levelheaded adminsitration.
Remember the glider pilot who got too close to a nuclear powerplant and found himself bunkered and interrogated like a terrorist… the tail has always wagged with the dog in these regards.
Maybe one of the AOPA operatives frequenting this website will remember and link to this archived and forgotten content.
If you can’t do what it takes to stay out of published TFR’s (whatever you think about the reasons behind it) you have no business being PIC of an aircraft. Work to change the rules you don’t like, but until the rules change, play by them or stay out of the game. Violators only make all us GA pilots look like undisciplined idiots whose wings the public will want clipped, and at the voting booth, there’s a lot more of the public than there are of us.
Ron, I don’t think anyone here is arguing for breaking rules on purpose.
We are debating whether the particular rule is rational. It is not.
So i doubt very much of NORAD would order fighters to shoot down a TFR violator around a wildfire (though perhaps they should..) but as others have said, the only real risk to our fearless leader from other aircraft is when he is in the air, and being followed by F-16’s or better. On the ground, with notice to all, it would be much easier to use a sniper or non-descript van packed with explosives or a self-directed (jam-proof..) drone to take him out than to fly a 172 into him on the golf course or at dinner in Florida. And a determined GA assassin would use something faster than a 172 with ADS-B and Transponder off, bringing into question the realistic response time of the orbiting jets. Point is that the 30 mile zone when someone is golfing is a waste, an economic hardship, and of no particular security value.
He would probably play nearby the same location, so no real help for us…
If they just reduce the diameter by half, that’s reducing the area by 75 percent, which would be a much smaller burden on pilots and businesses…
I was thinking he might get tired sooner.
Debate all you want, but do NOT denigrate the risks to the pilot involved, the intercepting pilots (see this accident) or anyone on the ground if the airplane has to be splashed. And please take my main point – for our own good, we need to do all we can to convince every GA pilot out there of the importance of doing all we can to avoid busting TFR’s, and trivializing the reasons for those TFR’s doesn’t help achieve that goal. With all the tools we have, there’s simply no excuse for these busts, and (God help me for agreeing with the politicians saying this) barring a true emergency, anyone who does deserves to be grounded for incompetence.
Perhaps so, but pilot convenience is not a consideration. Those TFR radii are based on comprehensive flight testing involving all sorts of threat aircraft and the various anti-aircraft defense systems.
Low level, NOE, very fast with pilot looking up at the buildings giving him cover from the F-16 which may have some issues maintaining visual on target darting about with human subjects on the road to the target. Lack of imagination displayed here. Oh, disregard, just the plot for a fiction action movie starring the fellow hanging from the landing gear strut in his latest movie.
TFRs are like gun free zones, anybody with a gun can walk in and shoot and anybody with a plane can fly in and Kamikazi the place if he wants to. Worse than VIP TFRs are the stupid a$$ baseball, basketball, and football TFRs. You can’t stop a crazy with a plane or a gun. I say do away with all TFRs period. Here is one more,George Bush has a Prohibited Area P49 10 miles west of Waco, Tx. over his ranch.
Its time for the 300 million Americans who hate GA to stand up and regulate you privileged cry babies out of existence.
Its time for you to stop comment-clowing and to start speaking for yourself.
lol.
I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not, but that comment certainly is amusing.
The real issue, GA wanted to be part of the solution after 9/11 and got screwed in the process
Whether it be an over reaching TFR, the DC SFRA or the DC FRZ, enough is enough. We pay taxes, aviation tax (via fuel taxes) and should have reasonable use of the airspace.
Whether it’s airports unusable during a TFR, or the normal reroute around the DC class B even when IFR, we (the aviation community) gets to pay for this security theater. And don’t get me going about DCA. Prior to 9/11, though pricy (thank you Signature), I routinely operated everything from a Navajo to a Hawker in there. How I (we) became a security threat? Of course the airlines loved it (more slots!!!).
Since 9/11 our lawmakers and capital have become more insular, forgetting the public they were there to serve.
8 busts in one weekend just shows how ineffective the TFR’s really are. And some of the comments on this thread show why the government can pick on GA and get away with it. I’m surprised someone hasn’t figured out how to use a drone to penetrate a TFR yet. The war in Ukraine, Gaza, and Iran sure demonstrates how useful they are, and how difficult they are to stop. Just think, the Air Force and Navy couldn’t stop a balloon launched by China that ended up crossing the US using all the expensive tech and even cannon fire in an attempt to bring it down. Until GA pilots and plane owners unite with one voice nothing will change with these worthless TFR’s!
Ron, I’ll agree to a point. The issue is that what was supposed to be reasonable security precautions have gotten out of hand. You and I have experienced it first hand whether it be Biden closing down everything around ILG or Trump closing everything around Bedminster.
The simple fact that I can’t even file an IFR through the SFRA on a published airway, speaks volumes. There is no reasonableness any more
I’m serious. I believe it was Bob Bishop who spent several weeks flying cruise missile profiles against the DC area out of Ocean City MD in a BD-5J. The CAP did light GA profiles in 172’s. It was all about having enough time to make a good friend/foe decision and warn off non-bandits before it got so close they had to splash the bogey.
Actually it proves they work – they were able to keep all 8 from getting so close before they were identified that they had to be splashed.