Mexican military helicopter lands in Laredo by mistake | Houston & Texas News | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle anyone believe that it was by mistake? maybe I should put this in Tin Foil because I'm wondering what and how many pounds or whom was unloaded from that chopper. I can't imagine a chopper pilot not knowing where his port is.. is this something that happens a lot? I just don't buy it..
Right Back when I was in the Navy I landed at Laredo Int and it is soooo different than the Mexican side that only somebody intending to lie would say that they mistook it for Laredo Int. If a pilot flew over Laredo, Tx and mistook it for Nuevo Laredo that pilot is blind and shouldn't be flying.
Too bad we couldn't have had a gang of rock throwing youths to greet them? Shoe would definitely be on the other foot. jim
I would tend to give the chopper pilot the "benefit of doubt" here. Simply because these Mexican Federal Troops are ALL new to this area, and have only been in the area a very few weeks. They do not know the roads, or landscape, and this is early in their rotation. I would also like to see the FAA do a better job of watching our Airspace, as that is VERY flat country, and Radar should cover it easily, and even better if we could just get the Mexicans to use Transponder Codes, on their airborne assets.
Military chopper? ok, lets weigh the likelihood.. I'm thinking there's a good chance that it has GPS. If not, we should invade.. lol.. that last part was a joke.
Of course it had a GPS! Our tax dollars paid for the very best for Mexico's finest. Although I did read an article on LEO South of the Border and it was stated that around 70% of the Police Forces there do not even have high school diplomas, let alone any higher education. Maybe it is likely some loosely trained guy who was 'new to the area', kinda dumb but the smartest of the bunch so he got picked to be the heli pilot and his GPS was out that day. In a Rube Goldbergian event like that, then, yes, I could believe this was an 'accident'.
I'm all for giving the pilot(s) the benefit of the doubt. That is I was. Until I checked out Google Earth and Google maps. While in reasonably close proximity to each other in terms of mileage it is crystal clear that a blind pilot flying at night would have been able to tell the two places apart. Seriously. Check it out.
All the opinions expressed so far, assumes that the Pilot, had seen the country, and the airports in question, from the AIR, and in daylight, BEFORE the flight, but the News stories do not establish that FACT. .... YMMV....
I'm an old Air Cav Recon guy, and I can tell you for a fact that quite a few of OUR military pilots can't navigate for shucks. In daylight, at Ft. Hood where they'd been flying for more than a year, they had difficulty getting us within a klick of where we showed them on the map. We always had to have a squad or team leader up front to point out where they should be landing the bird. At night it could be as far as 5 klicks off without help. A lot of the time, they refused to listen and we did some extra walking. So, it's entirely possible that this was an accident as the place is flat as a billiard table (few land marks except for the river) if I recall correctly. jim
I guess the more interesting question is why the US military didn't jump on him like stink on a skunk. Radar didn't see him? If not, why not? yadda, yadda yadda.
That is an easy one to answer Ghrit. Simply because, they can't tell the Military flights from any of the Dope Smuggling Planes, coming across the boarder, and Obummer doesn't want to hinder the movement of product. Now if the Mexicans would just turn on their Transponders, (assuming they actually HAVE Transponders) like the American Military does, our guys could see them a whole lot better, and warn them when they are getting close to the boarder....
River (the only one for 150 miles) + Mexico is on the Southwest of it + USA is on the Northeast side of it. Not an accident.