The TSA rule is coming down two days after the FAA took the rare step of issuing an emergency revocation of Hayden "Jim" Sheaffer's certificate -- the pilot in command of the Cessna 150 that breached the ultra-sensitive airspace around the White House on May 11. It also came two days after a Canadian-registered Cessna 340 breached the ADIZ, causing a brief evacuation of the Capitol. It was reportedly having communications problems after taking a lightning strike. In announcing the action against Sheaffer, the most severe sanction against a pilot, the FAA said that allowing him to continue to fly represented an "unacceptable risk to safety." Among the long list of sins the FAA says Sheaffer committed, it repeatedly notes that through much of the crisis, he let his passenger Troy Martin, a student pilot with 30 hours of training, do the flying. "These failures establish that you lack the qualifications necessary to hold an airman certificate," the FAA said in its letter to Sheaffer. Meanwhile, the pilot has broken his silence on the incident with an interview on the Today Show in which he said he was afraid he was going to be shot down. According to some sources, he was almost right.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/leadnews/incursion-pilot-loses-certificate