Image courtesy Gothamist

The 747 flyover of Lower Manhattan yesterday that caused thousands of panicked office workers to evacuate to the streets turned out to be a planned photo op that’s since become a big embarrassment to the White House. And The Wall Street Journal reports today that it wasn’t the only such event originally scheduled:

The White House had scheduled a follow-up session on May 5 or May 6 in Washington, D.C., according to two government officials. The D.C. flyover has now been canceled, a government official said.

The D.C. photo op should be canceled in the wake of all this, but we’d also venture that had it happened here first, it probably would not have been as big of a problem. Certainly Washington residents have their own terrible memories of low flying planes from Sept. 11, 2001, but we’re a little more accustomed to having presidential aircraft in our skies. Of course, we’re not at all accustomed to having jet airplanes fly right over the center of the city, but generally, any exemptions to the restricted airspace over the District are announced, even when military in nature. We’d like to think the same would have been done in this case, although given how it all went down in New York, maybe that view is overly trusting.