Sad Trombone
Uncle Joe visits Potemkin Wawa
At 09:08EDT I received an email from the Airline Owners and Pilots Association, informing me that an upcoming VIP Temporary Flight Restriction over Philadelphia, which had originally been published on Tuesday, was being amended: originally scheduled to end at 16:15, it was being extended to 16:45.
I get that many of you who aren’t involved in aviation may not understand what a gigantic pain in the ass these last minute changes entail. As a reminder, this is what the published TFR looks like:
And this is the list of what can’t happen inside those orange rings when the TFR is in effect:
Every magenta and blue circle you see in the sectional chart image above is an airport that is effectively shut down while our Retard-in-Chief wanders around the countryside. And apparently (hat tip:
) the 30 minute extension was to allow this to happen, at a so-far unidentified Philadelphia Wawa:I’ve got a couple of local observations here:
(1) That is a really nice Wawa. I live on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and our Wawas are covered in muddy napkins and sand.
(2) Milkshakes at Wawa are delivered via self-serve F’Real machines. As a young mother, I had to help my daughters navigate the cognitive demands placed on them by these outposts of Skynet, but that was mostly because they were too short to reach the cups.