It’s official that cost and other factors have caused the Virginia State Police to cut back on their aerial speed limit enforcement program. Over the past five years about 87 tickets have come from troopers patrolling interstates in Cessna airplanes. Over 5-thousand tickets have been issued since the General Assembly approved the program back in 2000. State police were forced to reduce expenses with less federal funding and facing a manpower shortage due to state budget cuts the decision was made for them. Most of the hours spent in the air last year were for surveillance, pilot training and administrative transports anyway and with a cost of fuel and maintenance at 150-dollars an hour it wasn’t cost effective. Each flight took on average about five hours using a trooper-pilot, a trooper to calculate speed and a trooper on the ground to pull the speeder over. (bg)