Fifteen minutes ago (at 9:58am), I received an E-mail and text alert from New York City’s Notify NYC alert system saying:
This is a message from Notify NYC. Notification 1 issued 05/11/09 at 10:00am. As per the FAA, a military plane will fly down and back up the Hudson River between the hours of 10:30 to 11:30 am today.
This warning comes soon after the White House — and to some extent City officials as well — came under fire for not alerting the public in advance of a photo shoot involving a Air Force One backup plane and some fighter jets. Obviously, the lesson has been learned by all those involved.
Update: At 10:24 am, I received this update:
This is a message from Notify NYC. Notification 2 issued 05/11/09 at 10:00am. As per the FAA, the planned military flyover has been cancelled.
Update 2: It turns out, according to CNN, that the Mayor’s office recommended to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that the flyover by Navy planes be cancelled, because there was not enough time to warn the public. FAA officials then told the Navy that permission would not be granted.
Photo released by White House on Friday of controversial flyover of Statue of Liberty.
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1 NotifyNYC, New York’s Emergency Text/E-Mail/Phone Alert Service, Goes Citywide Today // May 28, 2009 at 7:31 pm
[...] Edward Skyler, the Deputy Mayor who oversees NotifyNYC, kicked off the program’s citywide launch at the Office of Emergency Management’s(OEM) headquarters in downtown Brooklyn this afternoon. In an interview, Skyler pointed to last month’s incident when a 747 aircraft and two fighter jets flew over lower Manhattan scaring many area residents as an example of the value of these alerts. In that instance, the U.S. Department of Defense did not tell City officials who therefore were not able to send out a warning through NotifyNYC until afterwards. However, a couple weeks later during another scheduled flyover NotifyNYC did have the info beforehand and did send out an alert. [...]
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