History of the Maryland 3

October 7, 2007

I went through the process of signing up to fly into the “Maryland 3″ this past week. The “Maryland 3″ (sometimes called the DC-3) are the three airports within the Washington flight restricted zone (FRZ) — College Park Airport, Potomac Airfield, and Hyde Executive Field. I travel to Washington, D.C. for business a fair amount, and it’d be nice to fly myself instead of US Airways (I’ve mentioned a couple of times how much I hate them). I’ll talk about the process in detail in a future post, but first I’d like to review how we’ve come to this point.

Before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the airspace around Washington, D.C. was unexceptional. There were small prohibited areas over the places you’d expect — the White House and Capitol, the Naval Observatory (home of the Vice President of the United States), et cetera — and the usual Class B airspace around the three large area commercial airports, Ronald Reagan Washington National, Baltimore-Washington International, and Dulles International. General aviation traffic over the nation’s capital was essentially as unrestricted as it was over any other major metropolitan area.

After September 11, the FAA imposed a temporary flight restriction on the area around Washington, forbidding any general aviation flights within 15 nautical miles of Reagan National Airport. (A similar flight restriction was put in place over New York City, but it was removed by mid-November.) By the end of February 2002, the FAA had implemented the precursor to the current policy, allowing pilots based at the 3 airports inside the TFR to undergo a Secret Service background check and file a special flight plan in order to fly in and out of their home airport.

For several months in early 2003, progress took a step backwards. On February 10, 2003, as a result of highly publicized airspace incursions (in other words, morons flying over Washington, D.C. without a clearance) and the national threat level being raised to “orange,” the FAA announced the implementation of the Washington ADIZ — which required that pilots entering an area roughly the shape of the Class B airspace of Reagan National, Baltimore-Washington International, and Dulles International airports from the ground to 18,000 feet acquire a discrete transponder code and maintain communications with air traffic control — and placed new restrictions on the Maryland 3, including the requirement to undergo security inspections before takeoff, and to land at a “gateway” airport in Annapolis for inspection before entering the flight restricted zone. The new Maryland 3 restrictions remained in place until the national threat level was lowered to “yellow,” but the ADIZ remained even afterwards.

Aside from the “gateway” airport restrictions coming and going depending on the national threat level, procedures at the Maryland 3 remained the same for two years. It wasn’t until February 2005 that the FAA transferred authority for the Maryland 3 procedures to the Transportation Security Administration, and the current procedures came into effect. These include driving to the airport you’d like to have clearance to fly into (such as College Park) and watching a TSA security video, driving to the Flight Standards District Office and having your documents reviewed, and being fingerprinted at Reagan National Airport.

Here’s a link to the government’s page on the Maryland 3 procedures.