just saw a black/grey 727-looking plane flying at 200'

i don't have a pic- let's not make this about that- i just want to relay this information and ATS seems like the place. if i had one i'd be putting this up there in breaking news.

it was at roughly 11:30PST about 20 miles south of Tombstone AZ.

if anyone in tombstone or tucson saw it, please post, because i'd really like to know what it was doing. if this were a movie i'd say they were flying below the radar, but this is real life and it was probably military but ive NEVER ever seen any military planes flying that low- helicopters yes, last weekend as a matter of fact- but not full-sized airplanes.

a 727 is a 3/4-sized 747, right? all black or dark grey- very strange......

reply to post by IandEye


I do not have any idea about the area where you live, but could it have been a landing or a takeoff?
2nd

could it have been on its way to a paint job?

How do you know it was at 200'? The only way to tell would be with a flight tracking website.

The US military doesn't use the 727 anymore. There's a Capital Cargo International Airlines that flies out of Orlando that operates the 727, that is painted grey and white that goes into Phoenix but there are very few operators of the 727 left in the world. There are only 400 left world wide.

At 200 ft? Perhaps you mean 2,000ft?

I've never seen any aircraft flying at 200ft unless it was in the process of taking off or landing - and I'm not sure whether many are even capable of doing so safely, except maybe some light aircraft?

Originally posted by LiberalSceptic
reply to post by IandEye

 

I do not have any idea about the area where you live, but could it have been a landing or a takeoff?
2nd

the closest landing strip to Tombstone is in Tucson, 90 miles away. it wasn't crop-dusting either.....

Originally posted by IandEye

Originally posted by LiberalSceptic
reply to post by IandEye

 

I do not have any idea about the area where you live, but could it have been a landing or a takeoff?
2nd

the closest landing strip to Tombstone is in Tucson, 90 miles away. it wasn't crop-dusting either.....

Hmm, in that case it would seem really odd with an altitude of only 200.
And there are not any big roads nearby either? Perhaps an emergency landing?
I wish you had a picture to post, but hey, it is what it is.

Originally posted by AndyMayhew
At 200 ft?

Perhaps you mean 2,000ft?

I've never seen any aircraft flying at 200ft unless it was in the process of taking off or landing - and I'm not sure whether many are even capable of doing so safely, except maybe some light aircraft?

yes- i know. that's why i posted this thread. it was unbelievable seeing that large of a plane that close to the ground. it may have been 300' but was very low. i gauged this by the treeline and mountains. i see lots of planes every month, form students to military projects to border patrol drones doing flips in the air. I have NEVER seen anything like this. the winds are negligible, maybe 9 mph

maybe i should mention that the plane was 30 miles from the US/Mexico border headed northwest towards Tucson.

the only thing that comes to mind is they are doing another remake of "Flight of the Phoenix" and need some desert footage.

Back in the early 80's there were three 727 size planes,at very low altitude,evidently doing some kind of survey. It was happening at the same time that a natural gas survey was going on...They were dark gray and had a white circle with a blue pyramid in the center painted on the side no "N' numbers....All the windows were blacked out,and extremely quiet...I saw them several times over a three week period.. Scared the stuffing out of me each time I saw them they were so low...

Sounds like you saw a C-130, or something like it. They circle around and fly really low before coming in for a landing. They can be seen at any civilian airport at times. The black/gray paint job gave it away.

They are so big and fly so low that you wonder how they stay in the air. It can be an awe-inspiring sight if you've never seen one before.

No worries, they were probably just picking up some air-freight. They've been known to do that from time to time.

Do people realize that 200ft is the approx. height of the Statue of Liberty? That's high enough for a plane of that size to fly if they have a clear path set by air traffic control.

Calm down.

Libby Army Airfield in Sierra Vista/Fort Huachuca is close by.

It has three runways 12,000 ft, 5,366 ft, and 4285 ft. Also has a helipad.

It sounds like a good candidate for that aircraft

Originally posted by daddyroo45
Back in the early 80's there were three 727 size planes,at very low altitude,evidently doing some kind of survey. It was happening at the same time that a natural gas survey was going on...They were dark gray and had a white circle with a blue pyramid in the center painted on the side no "N' numbers....All the windows were blacked out,and extremely quiet...I saw them several times over a three week period.. Scared the stuffing out of me each time I saw them they were so low...

your description matches my experience- it was very quiet and very low. and very black.

I was thinking about starting a thread about the military aircraft I've been seeing the last few weeks. Now I do live near an Airforce base but I've lived in this area for over 10 years. I would see a couple cargo planes here and there but for the last 3 weeks I've seen a lot of activity. I've seen several cargo planes and what looks like Apaches flying in groups of 2 and 4 at low altitudes. The day before yesterday I saw the helicopters a few times that day. I don't know if they are just trying to get in their hours but 2 weeks ago we had the local police department in a pick-up, running code(lights and sirens), pulling a large trailer. It was a silver trailer with Department of Homeland Security on it. I couldn't get a picture in time and I checked the news for the next couple of hours. Nothing about it. I'm starting to believe they are prepping for something.

Some very low-flying aircraft has been passing over my mother's house in the evenings for the past couple of days. She hasn't gotten a really good look at it as it's flying after dark, but last night she got a quick look at the lights just before it disappeared behind the trees only about 100 feet from the house. It was VERY LOW and flew directly over the house. The sound seemed to come out of nowhere- she didn't hear it until it was already practically overhead. There is a military base several miles away, but this is not anywhere close to the runway approach. She's lived in this house since the late 1950s and has never experienced anything like this. It was in the local news that there are in fact drones now at the base, and we thought perhaps they're doing test runs with them. Again, no actual sighting of the aircraft itself yet, so we just don't know.

reply to post by IandEye


There is a plane graveyard south of Tuscon. Along I-10.

I'm not negating your experience. I keep hearing about "black heliocopters". I thot that was a big crock of tinfoil hat wearing crap. Until 3 days ago. There are power lines that run along my back alley. Black helo, low enough that the rotar motor was parellel to highest line, and the tail rotar had my old Mulberry tree lashing. There were numbers in red. It was so low, and so loud, I was drawn outside.

I am less than 200 miles from Tucson.

Originally posted by AndyMayhew
At 200 ft?

Perhaps you mean 2,000ft?

I've never seen any aircraft flying at 200ft unless it was in the process of taking off or landing - and I'm not sure whether many are even capable of doing so safely, except maybe some light aircraft?

Back before the Clinton era base closings, I lived in a rural area about 40 miles from a mid sized airbase. We were right on their flight path, apparently. It was nothing to see B-52s flying at 200-300 feet. I once saw three C-130s fly across one of our fields at what couldn't have been more than 100 feet. I was only standing about 200 yards away from the spot they flew over at the time. They were so low that they dipped down after clearing the tree line.

It makes sense. They had nowhere else to practice such maneuvers around here except over sparsely populated areas. I suppose its reasonably safe, and in wartime, would be used to keep their visible time over radar and surface to air missile sites to a minimum.

reply to post by vor78


Except why would a 727 type aircraft be flying that low? A C-130 or C-17 yes, but a 727? The only 727s that were used by the US military were C-22 VIP transports, and I'm not sure if they are still in use or not.

I remember when at my house in Ahwahtukee we had a few instances of large silver airplanes or something fly over very low,although they were silent,can't really say if they were airplanes,just silver in color

You might have seen a P-8. The Navy is testing one out of Fallon NV. Some of the low level routes go through Arizona and are set up so that the aircraft is never too far from a runway. The grey paint scheme sounds like one that the navy uses.