Imagine if ICE ordered your plane to land and they arrest all the passengers and flight attendants to bring into their torture facilities.
This is very unlikely to happen, but there’s precedent. The Bolivian president’s plane was diverted to Vienna, grounded, and searched because authorities believed Edward Snowden was aboard. There’s other examples of this shit happening (mostly in Europe).
The only thing far fetched about this scenario is that the US would employ this to randomly try to round up unspecified immigrants in order to detain them. If they catch wind of someone they deem high profile, though? Would not surprise me, but I would be surprised if they came after me because I shitpost on Lenny.
There are no standard flights that avoid US airspace when it would be faster to fly over. One, it’s a waste of time and money, and two, aircraft prefer to stick close to land in case they need to make an emergency landing (source: I vaguely remember reading that on Wikipedia once but I might have been drunk at the time).
If someone were legitimately concerned about this, they’d need to fly well away and back again (like make a flight change in Asia or Europe) so flight lanes don’t cross over the US.
Yes, but remember, Europe wasn’t looking for Snowden, the USA was. It’s thought that misinformation was given to cause this diversion.
Belarus also recently diverted commercial flights on misinformation and lost access to airspace as a consequence.
That is an unreasonable concern. ICE is not forcibly diverting commercial planes, nor are you going to win the anti-lottery of being the first.
If your flight is going to land in the US it will be because of an emergency or diversion. In an emergency they will land wherever they need to for safety. Even domestic flights near the US could divert across the boarder. But that is also incredibly rare.
The US charges airlines overflight fees for passing through the airspace controlled by the US, this includes the most of the pacific and atlantic. Any flight to Mexico will have the airline pay a fee to the US for the ATC services.
If you want to avoid the US fully you’ll have to plan a stopover in Europe, and South America or Africa. But I don’t think your concerns are reasonable.
MAGA border patrol have invaded Canada and kidnapped one of our citizens so nothing is out of the question for them. They’re constantly escalating.
I was unaware of this. Can you link a news article so I can learn about it? Thanks!
Coast Guard Arrested a Canadian Man. He Says He Wasn’t in U.S. Waters.
https://newrepublic.com/post/198436/border-control-coast-guard-canadian-arrested-us-waters
Do you mean flights that fly directly to Mexico from Canada?
Otherwise, you should be fine. ICE doesn’t have jurisdiction over the FAA and can’t just order random planes down. Especially planes from one country to another with no intervening stops in America. What on Earth would the rationale be? “Hey, citizens of other countries who had no intention of entering the US, we’ve kidnapped you and now you’re stuck here!”
There are plenty of valid concerns and fears about America but having them ground international, non US bound flights would be a nonsensical international incident with 0 gain.
They can’t just go to Venezuela and blow up people and boats, yet there they are doing it.
Why can’t they?
And I ask the same about ordering planes down. They can if they want to. Laws are now what the gop says they are. So why can’t they take down a plane ? Because of a law ?
Because laws governing the United States actions within the States are very different than international law.
There are actually mechanisms, enforcement, oversight and so on. ICE taking control of the FAA would at least be a lengthy court battle first. It’s why Trump hasn’t been able to fire Lisa Cook, why Kilmar was brought back etc.
There is no similar restraint on American military actions outside of America.
Enjoy your flight I guess, you have more faith in nazis than I do.
No, just a reasonable assumption of risk and reality.
If we’re going by nonsense at the outer bounds, trump could just nuke whateber country tomorrow. Oh, you’re still going about your life? Guess you have faith in nazis.
No, but if there is an emergency results in a plane landing in the US everyone is deplaned, what happens next? Who knows anymore.
As much as we rightly villify ICE, this just doesn’t make much sense.
Even operationally, you’d have to assume they have guys just sitting around waiting. And then, for some reason someone alerts them to an international flight landing so they bust through the apart to detain people who had never intended to visit?
What I could see happening is sure, you have to use a motel or something while they figure out alternate arrangements, the hospitality industry being legendary for a not entirely legal workforce means there’s a chance you get raided there? But this is stretching the bounds of credulity pretty gosh darned far.
You should be safe flying over the US, ICE does not yet have control of the FAA. Even once they get control of the FAA the FAA cannot get a plane flying with a flight plan. Again this is true unless another 9/11 happens, even then you will hopefully either not be out of Canadian airspace or to high up to actually land in the US.
If you fly via El Salvador you should be able to get around America.
Sure, MAGA fascists don’t have to make a lot of sense, but what’s the point of forcibly bringing in people you’d want to send out on a plane anyway, when it was planning to do that in the first place? I think that should be obvious to even the most faithful followers.
Anyway, as a thought experiment, if you love being seated on planes but you think US airspace stinks, you can go from Mexico City to Toronto via Bogotá and Paris or Madrid if you are okay with passing above Puerto Rico only.
Or, to avoid it completely, you can go to Panamá, Rio de Janeiro, Lisbon, then Toronto. Now to compare flight prices and travel times (won’t include any layover time, price is lowest baggage tier, random dates in October)
- MEX -> YYZ direct: $387, 4h50m
- MEX -> BOG -> MAD -> LIS -> YYZ: $1827, 23h40m
- MEX -> PTY -> GIG -> LIS -> YYZ: $2583, 28h50m.
Or Cuba? Or any number of other places that are actually somewhat enroute instead of making up idiotically convoluted and long routes?
The question is specifically how to avoid US airspace. There are plenty of direct flights from Latin America to Canada but they all pass through US terrestrial or oceanic airspace.
So you can stop at Havana or Varadero, but then you’ll still be passing over the Florida, North Carolina and New England coasts controlled by US-towers, on your way to Canada. It’s so far an unfounded fear but I’m entertaining it just to see the circuitous route you’d need to take to avoid it.
I cannot stress enough how crazy its increasingly getting here. Every month, every week, every day there is part of our system that is being torn apart or co-opted and ice seems to not have any safeguards with people getting killed, deported to foreign prisons, kids being abandoned when they take their parents or guardians. Its nuts.
