"Ogden Johnson III" wrote in message
...

Not saying anything about the legal questions, but I have one small
observation.

Obviously /some/ commercial aircraft was close enough to see a 747
with the "United States of America" markings of the 89th Airlift
Wing's VIP aircraft, including the two 747s used for Air Force One
flights. To get an answer back from a UK flight controller that "No,
that's a Gulfstream V" to your WTF query is stupid, since it raise
more questions than it answers in the minds of the pilots who damn
well know they saw a 747 with "United States of America" markings.

The 747s used for flying the President have been used to fly other
high government officials on missions here, there and elsewhere. When
flying someone like Colin Powell or Rumsfeld, it uses a standard USAF
Call Sign on the flight plan. Years ago, I understood that the 89th
used SAM [Special Airlift Mission] plus the last 3 or 4 digits of the
serial # as a call when they were not flying the Pres or VP. If they
had filed as such, that UK Controller could have replied "No, it's not
Air Force One, it's USAF SAM 8000 [or 9000]."


Listening to the popular press has caused many people to believe "Air Force
One" is an airplane, when in fact it is just a radio callsign. It is the
callsign of any USAF airplane that has the president aboard, and at times an
aircraft other than one of the two VC-25s (747-200) assigned to the 89th AW
is used. The 89th AW also operates the C-37, a military version of the
Gulfstream 5.

I don't think we've seen an accurate version of this story yet. They
deliberately filed a wrong aircraft type as a security measure? What did
they file as the callsign? If they filed as Air Force One they defeated the
purpose of filing the wrong type aircraft. If they filed as SAM1234, then
the UK controller would have no aircraft on frequency or any flight plan
data on Air Force One. So when the question was asked, "is that Air Force
One", what was the controller looking at to determine it was a Gulfstream 5?