'No-fly zone' pilot: A beautiful flight ... then 'shock'

"We still had not heard anything about President Obama coming to town," says the pilot, Lee Daily. "I think that's why I was so shocked."

Daily said it was a routine flight from Lake Chelan to Kenmore for him and his girlfriend - with beautiful weather and calm flying conditions.

He says he never saw the F-15 fighter jets that scrambled in response and never heard the booms that shook the entire region as the jets raced at supersonic speeds from Portland to Seattle.

But when he landed at a float plane harbor on Lake Washington at Kenmore - "then all the grief started," Daily says.

"A Kenmore representative met me at the airplane. They had been in radio contact and phone contact with both FAA and the Secret Service. And so they told what had happened and gave me some numbers that I had to call immediately, which I did," Daily says.

"And then about 15 or 20 minutes later, the Secret Service showed up and they interviewed me for probably two hours."

He says the Secret Service interrogator "was really nice."

A secret service agent is seen exiting the office of Kenmore Air on Tuesday, August 17, 2010.

"I didn't expect that," Daily says. "But I mean, very businesslike, very straightforward, right to the point, very polite and very nice - and covered his bases and I apologized and thanked him for his time."

"It was pretty amazing to have somebody in that category to be that nice and polite, just in the way they presented themselves and handled the whole situation," he adds. "It was pretty impressive."

He said his violation of restricted air space was "obviously just a mistake, an oversight on my part."

Daily says the Secret Service is now winding down its investigation, and now it will be turned over to the FAA.

The FAA says it posted a notice about the no-fly zone well before Daily took off on Tuesday. And if he didn't know about it, he should have known about it, the FAA said.

He still hasn't heard whether the FAA will pull his pilot's license.

"As far as I know I can fly, but until I can get this straightened out, we're just going to deal with the issues and try and get it straightened out," he says.

But if he doesn't lose his license - one thing is for sure, he says.

"I won't make the mistake that I made last Tuesday."