Please see the most recent updates in the "Where did the .com name go?" thread. Posts number 16 and 17.
He's lucky he wasn't shot down for failing to acknowledge NORAD or the F-16s....![]()
Unless he was making a beeline for a major population center like DC or New York, there's no way the USAF would risk shooting down something as small as a 172, since they're really not that threatening.
Despite what CNN and Fox insist, small aircraft make comically bad weapons, since they weight much less than most cars, and are constructed so that they essentially fold up if they impact something.
Shortly after 9/11, a teenager in Florida went nuts and crashed a 172 into a tall building, and caused no more damage than breaking a couple of windows and wrecking some furniture in the office the airplane hit.
In most cases, a U-Haul truck or SUV full of explosives can cause far more damage than ramming a Cessna into something, but the media in the US is hell-bent on terrifying people with the idea that small airplanes are going to kill us all.
Even when some idiot flies into the ADIZ around DC, the response has only been to send up F-16's or Blackhawks and force them down, since an errant missile or cannon shells pose just as much danger to people on the ground (if not more) than the intruder aircraft could possibly cause.