Well aware of that.
But if I am flying and some extreme emergency requires an immediate landing, and the closest airport is a military airport, I am going to land.
I am o.k going to jail or having guns pointed at me and will deal with the consequences later.
Swiss air 111 thought they were doing the right thing delaying the landing and we know how that turned out. They are all dead.
I am talking about an extreme, life or death emergency.
If I was a check pilot and doing an upgrade evaluation on a pilot upgrading to CA and they decided they didn't want to get in trouble and overflew a military installation , I would fail them.
A country should be protecting people, not punishing them for trying to save lives.
But you’re not a check pilot.
A real check pilot wouldn’t set up such a specious and simple strawman scenario and threaten a crew with failure. That isn’t how real checking, training, or type rating is done. That scenario is one-dimensional and unrealistic. You talk about “a military” installation, and I never said you could not land at “a military” installation, I simply said that some were different. Not all. Just a few.
So, sure, land at a military installation, if you need to. If they have an ILS you can fly (most Navy/USMC bases won’t).
You don’t have charts for some of the places I am talking about - so you wouldn’t be ABLE to choose them at night, or in IMC. If you don’t know the places I am talking about, then you couldn’t know how to get there and they are not an option for you.
So spare us the bravado about how you would “face guns” because that isn’t going to happen to you in commercial flying - you aren’t going to blunder into a high security area because you would never have been flight planned near it in the first place - but it is important context in answering the original post because that mistake has been made by pilots and the original post was broad.
IF you landed at a USAF or USN base, likely, all you will face is a bill for the fuel. They will want to get paid for the JP they pumped into your airplane. They also probably won’t have passenger terminal, amenities, or even a jet bridge. Not a big deal, but a consideration.
Setting up a silly one dimensional choice - “land at this restricted place or fail” isn’t how the world works and isn’t how aviation and checking work.
Complex choices - three different airports, with three runway lengths, different runway conditions, different approaches, and different weather and you have a dual hydraulic failure - is a much better assessment of how a crew makes decisions. That is realism. That is checking. That is evaluation of pilot performance.
Options like yours in the post above - “Fly over the P56/White House or crash” “Go through that thunderstorm to get to the nearest airport or I will fail you” are internet-stupid option sets, bullying, even, not a realistic assessment of crew performance.
Life isn’t that simple and neither is aviation.
I’ll leave the political swipe at the end unanswered because it doesn’t deserve an answer.