Plane-spotters to require government license

Date:May 17, 2004 / year-entry #192
Tags:non-computer
Orig Link:https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20040517-00/?p=39303
Comments:    3
Summary:Plane-spotters to require government license. The article spins it as a "benefit" for ground-based aviation buffs, but this is just one of those "two steps back, one step forwards" things. Plane-spotters were outright banned from airports in the summer of 2003. Now they can go back, but they'll need to shell out £15 for the...

Plane-spotters to require government license. The article spins it as a "benefit" for ground-based aviation buffs, but this is just one of those "two steps back, one step forwards" things. Plane-spotters were outright banned from airports in the summer of 2003.

Now they can go back, but they'll need to shell out £15 for the privilege.

And if I, random small-time aviation buff, want to go out and look at the pretty planes as they fly overhead, I'm out of luck. The "authorized" plane admirers might even report me as a security risk.

I hope I won't be convicted of international espionage.


Comments (3)
  1. Kevin Jump says:

    More nanny state paranoia; Are we seriously suggesting that if I take my 4 year old niece to look at the planes at Manchester airport, I am going to be labelled a terrorist?

    Sadly I think we are?

  2. Who comes up with this stuff? (Rhetorical question). sigh. I guess our only hope is to hope that the people who believe this is effective don’t vote…

  3. Excuse me?! In Singapore, lots of Singaporeans go to the airport to watch airplanes, or do whatever lovebirds do. I hope this nonsense do not propagate to Singapore. ;o)

Comments are closed.


*DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN THIS CONTENT. If you are the owner and would like it removed, please contact me. The content herein is an archived reproduction of entries from Raymond Chen's "Old New Thing" Blog (most recent link is here). It may have slight formatting modifications for consistency and to improve readability.

WHY DID I DUPLICATE THIS CONTENT HERE? Let me first say this site has never had anything to sell and has never shown ads of any kind. I have nothing monetarily to gain by duplicating content here. Because I had made my own local copy of this content throughout the years, for ease of using tools like grep, I decided to put it online after I discovered some of the original content previously and publicly available, had disappeared approximately early to mid 2019. At the same time, I present the content in an easily accessible theme-agnostic way.

The information provided by Raymond's blog is, for all practical purposes, more authoritative on Windows Development than Microsoft's own MSDN documentation and should be considered supplemental reading to that documentation. The wealth of missing details provided by this blog that Microsoft could not or did not document about Windows over the years is vital enough, many would agree an online "backup" of these details is a necessary endeavor. Specifics include:

<-- Back to Old New Thing Archive Index