USA - The land of the not so free.....

After Private Pilots Complain, Customs Rethinks Intercept Policy


Tom and Bonnie Lewis were stopped on a trip from Texas to New Hampshire because they were flying along a known drug air route

Federal border security agents have sharply reduced intercepts of general aviation aircraft, following complaints by pilots that excessive police action at small airports is restricting the freedom to fly.

An official with U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Office of Air and Marine Operations told NPR his agency has heard pilots' grievances and the program is being altered so as not to needlessly affront law-abiding pilots.

In recent years, more and more pilots have reported their aircraft stopped for warrantless searches by aggressive officers.

Stopping Grandma And Grandpa

Tom and Bonnie Lewis love to fly airplanes so much that they live in a residential airpark near Fort Worth, Texas, where their garage is a hangar.

Two years ago, they packed their bags, loaded them into the airplane, and took off for Nashua, N.H., to visit their daughter and her family. Mid-route, they stopped at an airport in Frankfort, Ky., to refuel and spend the night, when they noticed that a small jet had landed directly behind them, with no radio communication.

Four federal agents shouldering assault rifles scrambled out of the jet and surrounded the Lewis's little two-seater plane, asking for IDs.

"Asking where we'd been, basically checking us out," says Tom Lewis. "It didn't take them too long to figure out they had grandma and grandpa that were taking a trip to New Hampshire to visit the grandkids."

He says the CBP agents were courteous and professional.

After they realized the bewildered, gray-haired couple were not drug smugglers, they lightened up. The officers said they'd taken off from a base in Michigan and chased the red-and-white, aluminum airplane across the country because it was flying a known drug air route from Texas to the northeast. Tom Lewis thinks this is absolute nonsense.

"It's a growing infringement of our freedoms as Americans to travel within the country without fear of being stopped and inspected every time we turn around," he says.

Exasperated pilots say incidents like this, in which law enforcement officials stop and request to search a private aircraft without a warrant, are not isolated.

But according to the agency, the problem is being fixed.