BP Establishes a No-Fly Zone

Posted on 06/03/2010 at 1:42 pm by Bob Cesca

What the hell is this crap? BP is suddenly deciding who can and can not fly over the Gulf of Mexico?

The latest instance of denied press access comes from Belle Chasse, La.-based Southern Seaplane Inc., which was scheduled to take a New Orleans Times-Picayune photographer for a flyover on Tuesday afternoon, and says it was denied permission once BP officials learned that a member of the press would be on board.

“We are not at liberty to fly media, journalists, photographers, or scientists,” the company said in a letter it sent on Tuesday to Sen. David Vitter (R-La.). “We strongly feel that the reason for this massive [temporary flight restriction] is that BP wants to control their exposure to the press.”

I really have to wonder which entity has more power here. The federal government, the American people (and press) or British Petroleum. I mean, it really seems as though the government, people and press are being manhandled by BP.

ht

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  • Allen Frederick

    Yes, well that’s what happens when you cede control of your country to corporations. Is this really a surprise? Corporate propaganda is a multi-billion dollar industry in itself. BP certainly can’t control the message if pesky American citizens are actually allowed on their own land, or air in this case.Perhaps things would be better if people actually woke up, stopped playing Nintendo, and took their country back from corporations – by force if necessary.

  • Mather Z

    What’s their authority here?As in, if the press wanted to charter a plane to take photos and were told that they couldn’t, but did anyway, what if any would be the consequences?Is BP going around telling charter airlines that they can’t fly there and the airlines are blindly obeying, or did BP make that request through the FAA or some other government agency? If it’s the former, surely it’s only a matter of time before someone takes their job seriously enough to say “screw them”. If it’s the latter, we’re all screwed.

  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HHEF2OYnR0 OsborneInk

    Bob, I keep telling the teabaggers that THIS IS WHAT FASCISM LOOKS LIKE.

  • Gerald

    Citizens, get your cameras and go take pictures by land sea or air. Get arrested. I am a photographer living in S.W. Florida. I will defy all orders to stop and risk being arrested for what? Accessing public lands. What right do they have?

  • nicole473

    I think the corporations are in control. I think it’s been that way since sometime during the Bush admin. I think Obama wants to change it, and can’t.I think our government is accountable to the corporations first, last and only.I thought this back in 2008, but I guess I was hoping that Obama would somehow be able to change it just by being elected.We are screwed. Gerald is right. If we don’t stand up now, when will we ever stand up?

  • http://zirgar.blogspot.com ZIRGAR

    No fly, no bird, no fish, no clams, no turtles–yeah, I can see that.

  • Jan

    Is it to early to drink heavily as we watch BP take over country? i do believe only one agency has the authority to close the skies. And it’s not the BP agency.So is freedom of the press pretty much outta here???

  • brutlyhonest

    I haven’t been an active pilot in years, so I’m a little rusty reading this stuff http://tfr.faa.gov/save_pages/detail_0_3481.html#restrictions

    It appears the FAA has established a NOTAM to restrict flight ops below 3000 feet for safety. It really isn’t unusual in crowded airspace. That said, I suspect BP has more say in who gets approval to fly than they should.

  • http://www.phydeauxpseaks.blogspot.com Phydeaux Speaks

    Back when I was a kid, in the backwater foothills of NC, I had a classmate who passed his free time drawing pictures of battleships, tanks, and other large military “implements of destruction”, always emblazoned with “CSA will rise again”.I thought then that he was touting the Confederate States of America, but now I realize he meant the Corporate States of America.

  • http://politicalpartypooper.wordpress.com/ Political Party Pooper

    Here is where you finally learn what I have been saying to you for a long time, Bob. Big Free Enterprise = Goverment of the United States of America. And to think, all it took was a tragedy like this to expose it.You didn’t really think BP gave all that money to political hacks because they were nice, did you? This is the same company that has repeatedly used the sickest, strangest, stupidest propoganda to spin and control this event. Let’s make a list, shall we?1. Clean up workers have to sign a waiver agreeing not to talk to the press about their efforts. You’d think BP would want them talking to the press. The clean up crews are the people who NORMALLY make their living in the gulf, and might tell the press how generous and determined BP is to do the right thing. The flip side of that is enforced silence, which speaks for itself.2. When first asked if there was a spill from the sinking of the oil rig, BP officials claimed there was not. Yet they knew they had attempted to activate the fail-safe valves and failed…so they knew the well was already leaking when they were asked.3. When clean up workers become light headed or sick to the stomach from the fumes, the medical advice they have been given is to just turn their head away from the oil and take a breath of fresh air, and the feeling will subside. I ask you…4. Press have been turned away from N.O. Beaches, with a less than friendly “Who Dat? Who Dere?”5. Tony Baloney, CEO of BP, has repeatedly lied about the odds of success with each attempt made at capping or stopping the well. The most glaring lie was the Top Kill, which had never succeeded under water. They gav e it a 60-70% chance of success.6. BP refused to give an estimate of how much oil was being bled into the sea. The problem is, engineers everywhere know they are lying when they say they don’t know how much is escaping. Even before they drilled the well, they had calculated max. flow rate for the given, KNOWN pressures in the well against the size of the pipe they were using. This is basic engineering, folks. They know.7. BP told America they could handle a spill of 12.6 million gallons per day. Yup, and pigs fly.8. Corexit…need I say more?9. To get the approval for the Deepwater Horizon rig, BP told the Feds that they had enough equipment and oil booms “around the Gulf” to skim 17.6 million gallons of oil per day from the sea. Yet when the well blew, not a single vessel or length of boom was available in the Gulf for this type of service.10. Production at a different Deepwater Gulf site reaches as high as 150,000 barrels of oil per day – more than 6 million gallons. And your ticker reads just over 1 million gallons for a completley compromised well head?Do you want more? I’m doing an article for my blog. I could go on for hours and hours and hours. Long story short; BP’s “handling” of the press reminds me of Saddam Hussein, who repeatedly told his people that we (US Forces) were being driven into the sea during the first Gulf War.

  • getsmartin

    What they’ve (the FAA) imposed is a temporary flight restriction from the surface to 3000′. I imagine they’ve simply extended the boundaries over to the affected barrier islands off the Miss. and Alabama coast – not sure as I haven’t looked at the TFR. This is a pretty standard reaction in a disaster zone. I live here on the Miss. coast and intend to get aerial photos soon. I’ll simply snap the big lens on the camera and stay above 3000′. I did that after Katrina, by the way.PPP – I agree – the misinformation and lies coming from BP are outrageous. We’re in a really bad frame of mind down here.