Friday and apparently Saturday a blimp hovered “far too low” over residential Venice near the beach, between Washington and Windward.  Blimps are not supposed to do fly that low.

It started Friday night about 6:30 and continued for four hours.  Same Saturday.

Robin Rudisill, Venice Neighborhood Council neighborhood committee representative, investigated.

Robin called both the FAA and the LAPD Air Support Division.  Both told her that they had no control over this or even any way to determine if the blimp’s flight was approved.  She was told that blimps should not fly so low that they can be heard.  Flying that low, she was told by LAPD Air Support Division, that they are under air traffic control, which means that Air Traffic Control cannot  communicate with them to move them higher.

The FAA did tell her to contact the Aviation Safety Technician at the Western Pacific Regional Field Office on Monday to see if blimp had a permit and to see if it had a permit to fly that low and why.    This office Robin said would be the office to authorize a permit for anything out of the norm via a waiver with respect to flying so low.

“Between Friday at 4:30 pm and Monday at 7:30 am,” Robin wrote, “there appears to be no way to check whether they are authorized, nor is there any way to control them.  It seems like a loophole.  ‘Are we saying that no controls are needed for flying machines that fly that close to the ground, that close to citizens?”

One person emailed Robin to contact Film LA.  At first Film LA said they didn’t know anything about it.  They called back later to say it was a filming but this blimp was not on the permit.  Had it been on the permit, LAPD would have known about it.  FilmLA said the filmer really messed up but doubted if they could fine him.  Robin asks “Why not fine him?”

“Apparently, this is a pretty big issue” wrote Robin.  “Production companies will just try to get away with whatever they can (as they did in this situation), and blimps in particular are uncontrolled/unregulated, so I hope that my email will shed some light on this.

“It’s the perfect way for a terrorist to get in the area over one of the most populated tourist areas in the US.  In fact, the last thing I did last night was to Google blimps and found that they DO have accidents and also that there’s already been a movie about a blimp pilot helping terrorists attack the Super Bowl.

“And they hovered at an illegal altitude for over 8 hours over the past two days over our Venice neighborhoods, and no one, not the FAA (unless they come up with something on Monday), not the LAPD, not the Santa Monica airport, not even FilmL.A,  had any record that they were going to do it.”