we appreciate it. >>> joining us now, coming back to us now, cnn transportation analyst mary schiavo.f coffee. we're thinking about doing the same over here. mary, of course, a former inspector general for the department of transportation. the faa restricting airspace in montana for national defense reasons. we've not been given a reason at this time as to why that is. but mary, obviously they would not be doing this for some aircraft or object that was downed earlier today in canada. and we should -- note to our viewers, this is what the faa did before the chinese spy balloon was taken down off the coast of south carolina about a week ago. >> yeah, the faa is not known to willy-nilly restrict airspace. obviously they do it frequently over important events like the super bowl. and you know, they did it through the -- with the china spy balloon, et cetera. so the fact that they are restricting airspace, and of course they can do it for military operations and do so, and they can do it for the presidential planes and other significant aircraft. but the fact that they're doing it is pret

earlier we asked mary schiavo to weigh in on the significance of this. downing objects. don't know and haven't identified what they were yet. depending on which briefing you review, some of them say they did enter our airspace before we were actually aware of them entering the united states airspace which, you know, is of great concern because i'm up here working in alaska, and obviously it's hugely important to american defense. there's tremendous military presence. in anchorage yesterday and today, for example, there were awax reconnaissance planes up, the skies were full. there were a lot of military aircraft coming and going to, ant you can't really overestimate the value of the alaska defense system and alaskan defense system in alaska. it's very important on all of those fronts. the description of the object and the fact that the pilots really couldn't describe it is not surprising. the weather has been rather poor here in alaska in the area around anchorage. we've had heavy, heavy snowfall. more unusually cold and heavy weather. the skies have bee

cnn aviation analyst mary schiavo says america sat risk until we know more about these objects. >> it'sviation as well. these objects fly, or floating at 40,000 to 60,000 feet. u.s. commercial and other aircraft, private aircraft, and military aircraft can operate at those levels. it's close to the ceiling of the commercial air craft, of course, how high the plane can fly. the pilot it's sent up to check the objects out have said in some cases, their communications were interrupted. they said they've been difficult to see. they don't put out the usual signals to identify themselves which would allow transponders and most importantly collision avoidance equipment to work. and then, of course, every time one is spotted, aviation has to be moved away. there has to be a restricted zone and military flights have to come out. it's obvious this is a hazard to aviation. even if we weren't concerned about military operations, the applications are illegal under the federal aviation administration regulations, so we have to take them out. at this point, this is a hazard not only in terms of our na

joining us now to discuss this further is cnn transportation analyst mary schiavo, a former inspector general for the department of transportation. mary, we were talking to you last weekend about how weird it was to have a balloon, a chinese spy balloon flying over the united states, and being shot down off the coast of south carolina and then lo and be hold, here we are one week later, we had the incident that took place in alaska yesterday, and then we don't even know a whole lot about what is taking place today. the canadian prime minister ordering the takedown of an unidentified object over the yukon, that is very strange. >> well, very strange, but i've been working in alaska for two and a half weeks on a different airplane crash case. the difference in the activity here with military aviation, i'm literally, i can see it,you know, aviation and air base from here. there are awax planes, the early surveillance planes from the military base circling around alaska. i mean, there's a tremendous increase in activity here just on surveillance activities from, you know, fixed wing aircr