Jeroen Wenting wrote:

"JDupre5762" wrote in message
...
During the week of President Reagan's death and funeral I heard on one
radio station that President Bush allowed the 747 carrying Reagan's body
to Washington DC to be designated Air Force One for that trip. Does
anyone know if this is true. I wasn't able to watch or read as much
about it as I wanted. This would have been the first time that Air Force
One was used as a designator without the current president aboard. The
person making the claim was a caller to to a talk show so I am not
inclined to believe it without confirmation.

Most likely the reporter in question had heard from someone at
airliners.net that "Air Force 1" would carry president Reagan. The average
person doesn't know that the designation of the aircraft is not AF1 unless
the president is on board and will call it that whenever they see it.

At one time I think someone said there were 2 AF1s together somewhere

Air Force One (tail number 29000) took off from Andrews AFB, carrying
President Bush back to Texas, a good fifteen minutes before Special Air
Mission 28000 (the other 747 of the Presidential Wing) took off with the
body of Ronald Reagan on board.

They were both there at the same time, and C-SPAN at least showed them
both taking off (though they gave more coverage to SAM28000).

--
Marc Reeve
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