Dude Lands Gyrocopter on Capitol Lawn

[PawPaw]

Really

UPDATE 1:50 p.m.: WASHINGTON — Doug Hughes, the 61-year-old mailman from Ruskin, successfully landed his gyrocopter on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol today. He was promptly arrested.

I bet he was promptly arrested.

[dfwmtx]

You expect they'd shoot him down?

[Vonz90]

He was promptly arrested.

I bet he was promptly arrested.

Unless he brought hookers with him.

[Yogimus]

Too sober to be secret service.

[Aesop]

So much for the web of ATC and airspace security in the nation's capitol.

Matthias Rust says "Hi."

He should have claimed to be a regional airlines' CATP who just got lost and landed on the wrong runway.

[Flintlock Tom]

There was a similar event in Unintended Consequences during which a father and son were dropping leaflets from para-planes over the capital.
I think one of them survived.

[tfbncc]

Boy, there's gonna be a whole lotta CYA going on in the capitol police and secret service right about now. I did some follow up research on this and found out a few interesting points:

This was not a hairbrained scheme hatched overnight over a couple of bottles of beer. Doug Hughes has been planning this for at least 2 years and he wasn't secretive about it. He runs a website and forum where he talked about the plan in detail. He worked with a local newspaper report to document the entire evolution of the event and they even broadcast a live stream of the landing.

Someone on his forum got concerned and called the secret service back around 2013 and an agent supposedly came out and interviewed him about his plan. He was very forthright and answered all the questions, gave permission for the agent to interview his doctor and co-workers, etc. Nothing ever happened after the interview.

He posted a youtube video explaining who he was, why he was doing this: Video Link

He e-mailed the authorities and local news outlets at least an hour prior to his flight to inform them he was coming.

After all this, everyone was still caught with their pants around their ankles.

And the reaction of the media is priceless! OMG...Terrorists! Wait, what? Oh crap!

[Greg]

Has a postal worker finally managed to find a way to get fired?

[JustinR]

You expect they'd shoot him down?

Eh, probably not worth the cost of one of the missiles, when a slingshot would do.

[dfwmtx]

Mailman poster seconds from being blow out of the sky, according to Internet version of fish&chipswrap

The ass-covering in DC is strong today.

Apparently NORAD didn't even know about the flight until it was on the ground.

Yeah, if they wouldn't scrambled fighters for hijacked jets on 9-11, I had a feeling a gyro-copter -smaller radar cross-section- I'm not surprised they'd do next to nothing over this.

Alas, mailman protestor's protest has failed, since we're talking more about what he did than the cause he's trying to bring to light - you know, that pesky "campaign finance reform" and "political corruption' issue. Can't say I blame him for taking the gryo-copter to DC; after all, who wants to get groped by a gay TSA agent?

Go back to sleep, America. We'll release a few more Kardishan selfies soon to lull you off to dreamland.