Good afternoon planefags! 2/9 Daily Post
✈️ Planes ✈️
Today's finds
- Algerian Gulfstream out of Savannah, GA via u/leta
- The 82-8000 "AF1" plane landed after seeming to circle/land at Langley.
It didn't put up a callsign at all and its transponders seemed to stay off for the majority of the flight.according to u/Tropic_Lightning and u/Warren_Puffitt they may have been practicing approaches! - An Israeli B703 is flying on the East coast as well and has stopped tracking. This plane is a 'blocked aircraft' on most major radar sites (like AF1 is)
- 3 VENUS flights are up out of DC. Probably training, but the one commonly used as AF2 has been turning tracking off on occasion.
- SAM735 out of DC
General info:
- Joe Biden took one of the 'small' planes that can be used as AF1 this past weekend to Delaware. I have seen no confirmation of the callsign "Air Force 1" being used, please post if you find out anything more.
- A SAM flight is a Special Air Mission meaning a high level official is on the plane
- AF1 alternates between 2 different flights reg number: 82-8000 or 92-9000, but they may be flying a test flight if they aren't putting up the AF1 callsign.
- The callsign "AF1" does not need to be used to mean POTUS is onboard, they may use a different one for security
- VENUS indicates a training mission
Side note: if anyone is a front end dev or knows react/vue we need you for a project.
Happy flying!
Correction on the third bullet: The Presidential Airlift Group uses two VC25s. This shot is from a movie on my Plex server called "Secret Access: Air Force One." Shows them both in the hangar at Joint Base Andrews. https://files.catbox.moe/pxhu3v.jpg
Which do I need to correct? The two shown in that photo are the 82-8000 and 92-9000 that I listed. The plane Biden took was a C-32A that is occasionally used as AF1 when flying into small airports. Trump used it a handful of times for that as well.
Maybe it was just the way I read it. I read it that the registration number would shift, but that wasn't clear that the actual airframe was involved. If you saw them on the ramp, one would have a tail number of 28000 and the other would have a tail number of 29000. Might be just the way I read the post. If so, I apologize.
No worries, I'm always looking to add and improve. The registration won't change, but the callsign will and the hex# might. Those two tail numbers match up with the 2 registration numbers listed. I'm still not 100% sure why the tail numbers differ from registration on some planes, however.