My grandfather was almost shot down by ground to air missiles at the Whitehouse (2018)

Re:My grandfather was almost shot down by ground to air miss... by thrwwy95fab9d1 on Tuesday January 17, 2023 @12:27PM (#34415477)

I had the same skeptical reaction to this story. The runways may have changed numbers (I’m not sure how to confirm this), but if they were crossing the river taking off from what is now runway 19, they seriously deviated from their flight plan and deserved the call.

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Re:My grandfather was almost shot down by ground to air miss... by StaleTortilla on Tuesday January 17, 2023 @06:53PM (#34421254)

So glad I'm not the only one interested in looking at a map to help understand the story. The runway numbers did indeed change, back in 1999: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan_Washington_Natio...

Agreed that the pilot definitely made a huge, and not really reasonable mistake. Even though it was pre-9/11, I'd expect a pilot who was going to fly in/around DC to know there's going to be restricted airspace and to take the time to understand it.

(if link doesn't work, go to the Wikipedia article for Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, and look at the bullets under "Expansion and restrictions")

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Re:My grandfather was almost shot down by ground to air miss... by dkjaudyeqooe on Tuesday January 17, 2023 @09:02PM (#34422517)

With magnetic shift runway 18 could very well have been renamed 19.

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Re:My grandfather was almost shot down by ground to air miss... by mike_d on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @01:19AM (#34423945)

> The runways may have changed numbers (I’m not sure how to confirm this)

Runways and named by taking the degrees from magnetic north and dropping the last digit. Parallel runways will be designated (for example) 31L(eft) 31C(enter) 31R(right).

You'd need to rotate the runway to rename it.

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Re:My grandfather was almost shot down by ground to air miss... by margalabargala on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @01:32AM (#34423990)

That's one option. The other one is to move magnetic north.

This story is from the early 80s. The magnetic north pole moves around 40 miles per year. What was once runway 18 at DCA over 40 years ago is now 19.

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