Once more we’re streaming “LA Flights” on YouTube but this time we’re waiting for arguably the most famous plane in the world…the VC-25A (a heavily modified Boeing 747-200) known as Air Force 1 when the President is aboard.
I did have a chance to see Air Force 1 live from the Observation Deck at RDU when President Obama came to town and I was rocking two cameras whilst crammed against the railing of the platform in the prime space I’d scored a hour or so before arrival.
I did learn something new today…I didn’t think that you could track Air Force 1 but it turns out that is only true on the flight trackers that filter their flight information like FlightAware or FlightRadar24.
Those sites rely on data collected from the avionics systems of the planes using a system called ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast) which is used to supplement radar coverage for air traffic controllers. It periodically determines location/speed/altitude from the navigation instruments and communicates it via radio or satellite to the ADS-B data aggregator which then makes the information available to controllers and the flight tracking sites.
The main advantage of ADS-B is that it’s often much closer to real-time information than radar that depends on a transponder which allows controllers to separate aircraft closer together to make more efficient use of the airspace.
The commercial flight trackers filter out sensitive (military and other potential covert flights) and well-known tail numbers (like private jets owned by celebrities) before presenting the tracking data to the user.
However, if you know the tail number (in this case 82-8000 which refers to 1982 when the VC-25A was procured and the tail number) and the right website to visit, you can track Air Force 1 provided the ADS-B transponder is activated. If they’re operating a sensitive mission, they may not have the ADS-B transmitter running as military aircraft have the capability of switching it off…commercial aircraft must have ADS-B Out installed and it is required to be functional during all phases of flight.
But for domestic runs like this one where security at 29,000 ft or more isn’t a major concern, military aircraft do tend to keep the ADS-B transmitters active whilst in flight to ease the workload on en-route controllers and reduce the need to communicate directly with those centres.
It was interesting watching the airspace clear out before landing where you could see quite a space develop between Air New Zealand flight 6 and Air Force 1 and its companion KC-135 tanker in a normally very congested airspace.
When Air Force 1 departed three days later, you could see the four C-17 support aircraft trailing Air Force 1, a C-32A containing White House VIPs, and a separate C-32A as Air Force 2 with the Vice-President aboard that departed from Burbank about 20 minutes after the President had left LAX and there was a significant distance between them.
