Ask the pilot

The mystery of Air Force One en route to Baghdad -- could it have happened as the White House claimed?

By Patrick Smith

Dec 12, 2003 | The first time I saw it was in the fall of 1992, walking along the Revere Beach sea wall in the company of my parents' Weimaraner. It approached from the northeast, head on, lumbering down the coastline, and my first thought was Aer Lingus. The heavy afternoon sun had turned blue into green, the forward fuselage taking on the distinctive mossy hue of the Irish national carrier, whose 747s were a regular sight at Logan International.

But then, as it swung closer and into profile, green went blue and I could see, clearly and with some astonishment, that it was Air Force One.

The plane passed noisily above me, less than a thousand feet overhead, then sank past the hills of Beachmont toward runway 22L. I remember it fishtailing slightly -- a wobble, a yaw, a crooked bank -- and silently chuckled. Not even the president's plane is immune to the push of a good tight crosswind.

It was a handsome sight. One thing that has always pleased me about Air Force One is its relative aesthetic modesty. The newest version, a modified Boeing 747-200, carries virtually the same markings as the old 707 it superseded -- the sweeping forward crown, simple tail hash and subtle gold highlights. The muted blues, in concert with a couple of judiciously placed flags and the presidential seal, give the plane a dignified, statesmanlike demeanor. Whether the obfuscation between military and civilian is intentional I can't say, but it's definitely present and serves an important symbolic purpose.

In 1962 John F. Kennedy's modified Boeing 707 became the first aircraft to carry the Air Force One designation. Prior to that, various propeller planes were supplied by the armed forces or contracted commercially for the job. In 1943, Franklin Roosevelt traveled to the Casablanca conference in a Pan Am flying boat, the "Dixie Clipper," celebrating his 61st birthday in the plane's dining room. Roosevelt himself had created the Presidential Pilot Office to supply the president and his staff with air transportation.

(I know this, in part, because the White House Web site tells me so. "In 1944," the page reads, "President Franklin D. Roosevelt called for the creation of the Presidential Pilot Office's [sic]..." Something about a blatant grammatical error in such an official location really worries me. As of press time my letter to the webmaster has not yet resulted in a fix.)

The vice president, if you're wondering, also has a jet at his disposal. Air Force Two is a 757 decked-out in a likewise blue and white pattern.

There isn't an Air Force Three.

Elsewhere heads of state and their officials do it similarly -- or differently, depending. Some travel in standard military transports or will borrow jets from their country's national airline. Others arrive in stylish airborne limos not unlike our president's. The government air wing of the United Arab Emirates, a country about the size of metro Washington, owns seven large jets, including two 747s, a 767 and an Airbus A300. In nearby Qatar, the pride of four VIP aircraft maintained by Qatar Amiri Flight is an immaculately outfitted Airbus A340.

During the 1990s at Logan, it wasn't unusual to spot a Saudi Arabian Airlines (then called Saudia) L-1011 TriStar, chocked and secured for the weekend at the north cargo ramp. As the story went, members of the Saudi royal family would drop in for three-day shopping junkets or visits to relatives at local colleges, making use of the huge jetliner the way one might borrow a company car.

With junkets, Arab countries and Air Force One in mind, George W. Bush's Thanksgiving charter to Baghdad International Airport (formerly Saddam International, soon to be renamed in honor of the Bush family, Donald Rumsfeld or Halliburton), quickly became an event of scandal and intrigue. The trip has been amped vociferously by both sides -- those who concocted the braggadocio, and those who've considered it overhyped and cloaked in unnerving secrecy.

If you missed it, Dubya's out-and-back power lunch was pulled off so clandestinely that only a handful of government officials even knew it was happening. The president was escorted in an unmarked car from his residence in Texas, shuttled secretly to Washington to pick up a selectively chosen, gagged and bound press corps, then whisked to Baghdad for a brief airport dinner with troops and a handful of Iraqi officials. The flight operated under radio silence using a partially phony flight plan.

Even before Bush arrived back in the United States, a strange and controversial story began to circulate. On the way between Andrews Air Force Base and Baghdad, somewhere off the coast of England just before sunrise on Thanksgiving morning, a British Airways crew noticed Bush's distinctive blue and white 747 whizzing past. Surprised and curious, the Brits queried a London air traffic control facility in Swanwick, U.K. (No, they did not call "the tower" as stated in some reports. They radioed an upper-altitude facility used by flights operating between North America and Europe.) "Did I just see Air Force One?" asked the B.A. pilot, coming within a microphone click of blowing the mission's cover.

Air Force One's commander, hardly skipping a beat, shot back cryptically with, "Gulfstream Five," a somewhat bizarre reference to a smaller VIP jet often used by government officials. The B.A. pilot, now clued in, answered, "Ohhh..."

I chuckled at this, imagining the scene: the semi-slumbering B.A. fliers in their cockpit, the glow of the instrument screens, a crack of orange dawn along the horizon. Then, craned necks and quizzical looks: "Did you ... do you think...?"

Trouble is, it may never have happened.

British Airways says none of its crews made such a comment, and White House spokespeople have twice amended the account. Their latest version claims it may not have been a British Airways crew who chimed in, but somebody else's. That airline has not been identified.

In short order I received a flurry of letters -- some very nervous-sounding, reeking of suspicion and distrust, others more calmly sarcastic -- curious to hear what I may know or think about flight plans and the ability to identify passing jets over the ocean in predawn darkness.

Next Page: There's no way a pilot could recognize Air Force One in midair, is there?

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