Originally Posted by p1cunnin

Hey gang, let's not be bashing LEOs here. Anybody who straps a gun on their hip everyday as part of their basic equipment list has a job that most of us wouldn't want in a million years or we'd be doing it. So let's chill out on the personal attacks.

What we should be addressing is one more example of inconsistent / overzealous application of whatever rules are out there. Either observing airports / aircraft is ok, or it isn't. And banning that is ridiculous unless you start building airports in the middle of nowhere (like DEN) because anyone can pull up a chair under a flight path within a mile of the airport and look at low and slow planes in most metro areas.

Making up the rules location by location leads to stupid policies like this and then dumb reasoning for the application of the policy. Falling back on a rationale that is incorrect ("it's Federal law") is no different than getting fired by a manager who blames it on somebody else ("hey, I had nothing to do with this, THEY made me do it") when you dang well know he made the call. If the LAN security dude wants to keep people away from his airport, then he should say so. "Hey folks, we realize that LAN is a Podunk little airport and no terrorist in his right mind would even bother with us, but we also have three guys to secure 200 acres with a four mile perimeter and frankly, if something happens here, or somewhere else because we didn't do something, it's my rear end and not yours and I don't want that hanging over my head." Then he should say, "Tell you what. If you want to watch the planes, here's the place we'd like you to be. We built a little gravel lot over here and you can still see everything going on (and we have a camera on it so we can see you) -- and because we want some friendly eyes on the airport to help us out, we put up some bleachers and a porta-john over there too. But please don't go hanging out at the fence."