Pilot takes advantage of Nellis air traffic controller’s mistake and gets clearest images of the top-secret Area 51 base we’ve ever seen.
A wily Nevada pilot took advantage of Nellis air traffic controllers in April 2020. The pilot had flown near the Nevada Test and Training Range (NTTR) base before and knew that parts of the highly restricted airspace above the Mojave Desert were sometimes opened if no air traffic was using the space. Knowing this, Gabriel Zeifman notified Groom Lake’s control towers that he was flying toward a destination on the other side of the base. After several tries, he finally found the base “cold” (meaning no military flights were taking place in the airspace), and was given permission to fly across an outermost border. What Area 51 personnel did not know, was that Zeifman’s Cessna 150 carried a powerful camera capable of gleaning clear photos from