Plane with escort(s) (i think odd)

(I was not sure where to put this one so if its not in the right place could it be moved please.)


I recently bought a new camera and today was the first nice day that I actually had time to go out and play with it. I started taking video of my neighborhood and zoomed in pics to see how good the camera really was. I saw a jet in the sky. I aimed up and nearly missed it over my house as I tried to zoom in on it as tight as I could. It was just a test picture, again to test my camera. This is the picture of it. (I was rushed so it is blurry.)




About 45 seconds later I looked up again and saw another large Jet with a escort flying in sync with it.




All three planes were flying on the same flight path, going about the same speed, and were only roughly 45 secs apart, so I am assuming they were together.


Air force One doesn't fly with an escort when over the continental US, at least as far as I know unless there is a direct threat to it. It had one on 9-11. So what is it? It looks like a 747 that had two escorts. The two smaller planes looked like Lear jets rather than fighters. The plane was headed due west, maybe heading to Atlanta. The pictures were taken over Charleston, SC @ 1:45p.m. I did a bit of research and Bush is suppose depart for Israel today, Tuesday the 13th, at about 5pm from Washington D.C. So, that should put Air Force One on the ground getting prepped for a cross Atlantic Flight to Israel and not flying over South Carolina. Any Ideas?

[edit on 13-5-2008 by emptee]

i wouldn't think much of it. planes fly on tracks all the time, especially jumbo jets, as they are controlled by radar. the ATC system is like a network of highways and interstates in the air so that airplanes don't (or shouldn't at least) come into close proximity with each other.

think about how fast a commercial jet liner moves, and then compare that to it's altitude. you said they were about 45 seconds apart. 45 seconds is a long time between jets moving at that speed. now, if you said that when you looked up, you saw a jet surrounded on each side by other, smaller jets, like in a tight diamond pattern, then i would say that it could be accompanied. in this case, however, most likely just a couple planes that happened to be going in the same direction.

the proper spacing for planes at cruising level ( above flight level 180, or 18000 feet) is anywhere between 3 and 30 nautical miles (depending on equipment on board, size, and speed of aircraft) and 1000 feet of vertical separation.

all this is described in the ATC bible, the FAAO 7110.65

to sum it up, there's most likely nothing to worry about. if you have any other questions, feel free to ask

these two planes were flying at the same exact speed and in the same exact position and flew that way from the time i saw them till the time they disappeared over my house. They just weren't "going the same direction", the first one may have been just a coincidence but the large jet with the small jet next to it wasn't just a chance encounter. They were flying together.

I don't seen any escorts in either one of these pictures, I simply see contrails, and that's it. Not sure what the big deal is.

In the second picture...the lower left corner. Its hard to see but there is a plane there. It was like a LearJet flying alongside the larger one.

The plane in the first picture was flying the exact same direction and roughly same speed about 45 seconds ahead of the planes in the second picture....but might not have anything to do with anything.

I can see something resembling an aircraft with a red color fuselage in the lower left of the second picture. It is much smaller than the jet. Could it be military? I'm certainly not an aircraft expert, perhaps the resident ATS experts can chime it.

It would appear to be shadowing the jet.

That could be distortion...but it could be a plane. It's not a jet, in which case it is much lower than the jet, because the prop plane (to my knowledge) isn't capable of achieving that altitude.

1ST thing... i live near Philadelphia Pennsylvania and at about 3:00 pm on tuesday i witnessed three commercial aircraft flying in tight formation and it was cool because they were all making contrails. never seen them guys fly in a pattern like that myself and even my 6 year old said how cool they looked way up there.
2ND in 2002 i did see air force one fly over where i worked at the time. everyone inside came out when they heard and it was a cool event. i believe it had four fighter jets on each side and it wasn't very high at all. It must have come right out of Phillies airport.

I once saw 4 B-52s flying in formation. I don't think it was anything unusual as I live near KAFB. But those pics look like civilian aircraft, and that's is very odd that they would be flying in formation.

Coming off the ANG you see sometimes four f-16s flying formation and even back they flew the a-10s up to six.

[edit on 14-5-2008 by alienstar]

It does appear to be shadowing it, no idea why though.

it just doesn't make any sense to me that these two aircraft would be flying in formation with each other. if the smaller aircraft was a lear jet as you described, there is no reason for it to be part of a formation flight with a jumbo jet. besides that, i can't recollect any time a jumbo jet would ever be part of a formation flight except in AF1's case, when being accompanied by military jets, etc. Not saying that jumbo jets are never in formation flights, it's just rather uncommon.

what is most likely happening here is what i said before, the two aircraft are just going in the same direction. you say that they are moving in exactly the same direction, this is because they are extremely likely to be using NAVAIDS, such as an NDB, VOR, TACAN, DME, etc. when they use these navaids, they are placed on a vector, or bearing, such as 180, 270, 090, any bearing 1 and 360. this explains why they are moving in the exact same direction, because they are using a common NAVAID. and lets just say that they aren't using a NAVAID, unlikely as it would be, the plane is still extremely likely to be being controlled by radar, and is still placed on a bearing that coincides with a flight corridor to get the planes to wherever they are going in a timely manner.

Hard to tell what type aircraft but it could have been a KC-135 practicing inflight refueling with the local ANG. The chasing planes you saw might have been following till the got out of controlled airspace before commensing the drill.

Zindo

Like I said before, the smaller plane looked like a LearJet, it was to big to be a fighter is what i mean by that and also not a prop plane and you can tell just by measuring the wingspan of the larger plane (maybe a 747?) that in my opinion they are way to close to each other unless it was a escort. (thinks about all the mid air collision at airport over the past 20 years.)I highly doubt that any airline would would allow two planes especially one possibly being a commercial plane full of people to be so close together. Let me again restate that these two plane were flying the exact same speed altitude and direction. They flew across the entire sky side by side and never change distance from each other. I live near a internation airport and see planes fly in nearly the same flight paths before. I have Never seen a small jet and a large 747-like jet fly like this before in my life.

Also, I took this photo with the camera digital zoomed all the way in. If the smaller plane was lower than the big one it would be much much easier to see and maybe even as big as the larger jet and much more clear. Ill take a few pics tomorrow of planes just to kind of show you what I am talking about. (or when I have a chance.)


[edit on 18-5-2008 by emptee]

Yesterday I saw a passenger jet escorted with three fighters on each wing and another larger passenger jet following directly behing the lead passenger jet in a V pattern heading Northwest across Canada...does this sound like an airforce one type formation??