Sam Graves: “I have an amendment that would prohibit funds from being used to enforce congressionally mandated Temporary Flight…”

“I have an amendment that would prohibit funds from being used to enforce congressionally mandated Temporary Flight Restrictions, or TFRs, for sports stadiums. These permanent TFRs, to be quite honest with you, are impractical, they're ineffective, and they create serious problems for hundreds of thousands of pilots, countless air shows, aerial surveyors, and a whole lot of other small businesses and individuals that utilize aviation. In 2004, Congress mandated the FAA to impose permanent TFRs in the airspace above and around sports stadiums with a seating capacity greater than 30,000. Think of these as restricted airspace bubbles that basically extend 3,000 feet high and they have a 3\1/2\ mile-wide radius that is in effect 1 hour prior to the event to 1 hour just after the event. And in any given year, there are roughly 3,000 of these stadium TFRs. Now, proponents of these claim that they bolster national security and mitigate an aerial threat. I can't help but absolutely laugh at that assertion. First, there's absolutely no realtime mechanism or capability to prevent an aerial attack originating within or outside the 3\1/2\ miles at 3,000 feet above ground level, and the logic would apply even if the restrictions were expanded exponentially. In fact, if you take a jet traveling at 500 miles an hour, it's just going to take a few seconds to penetrate that TFR to reach that stadium.…”