It’s good to see this forum area. I’m hoping it will be used to post tail/flight numbers of aircraft worth following. Other possibilities might be the codes for smaller airports that have special aircraft (possibly corporate craft) based there. Also please indicate what makes this tail/airport of special interest.
I’ll begin it with an aircraft:
N698SS
This is the charter plane of the Dallas Stars (NHL). Its flights roughly follow the road schedule of the hockey team, although there may some management travel added in. The plane is owned by Southwest Sports Aviation. SSA has a second plane used for road trips of the Texas Rangers (same ownership as the hockey team).
One interesting travel aspect I found is that when the team returns to Dallas, they don’t go through Customs in Dallas. On the last trip back from Vancouver, they stopped at Great Falls, MT for about an hour. That must have been to clear Customs in an uncrowded location. The team values its privacy, I’m sure.
I remember seeing on Jay Leno a guy give this tail number to John Travolta N707JT it was a big deal because Travolta has a Boeing 707 that he flys himself.
The big NASCAR race this weekend was at Texas Motor Speedway. The nearest airport is KDFW, which I believe is closed to the smaller planes of general aviation. There may have been 6-10 smaller airfields within 30 miles of the track, but unless one monitors baseline activity, it’s hard to tell how much impact the race has.
I follow KADS in Addison, which is moderately active with general/business flights to and from all parts of the country. There are several charter operations based in Addison, e.g. “FlexJet”. I saw no unusal activity over the weekend.
It was hard to detect anything specifically tied to NASCAR this weekend.
Actually the airport is right next to the track, addison- Fort worth, plenty of activity. Also search Concord, NC (Kjqf), plenty of Nascar activity during the week, espically Thursday thru Sunday.
I don’t think it’s legal/possible to close an airport to general aviation aircraft and limit it to commercial aircraft or anything like that. I used to be a regular visitor in a single-engine aircraft to DFW, in fact.
Sometimes they don’t have enough ramp space, so the airport is effectively closed to GA that wants to park.
Well, there’s always GA parking and it’s first come/first serve or by reservation, so certainly you have to play the same game as the other GA aircraft. AUS comes close to running out of parking at the two FBOs during University of Texas football game days and I know KHOU/KIAH were at capacity during the Superbowl, but I haven’t seen the problem other than that.
I saw this plane on the Arrivals list for KDAL last night. My first thought was that it was some government aircraft (“DC”). It wasn’t. I googled the operator (ark-air flight) and found this URL, which is interesting reading in itself…
Actually the airport is right next to the track, addison- Fort worth, plenty of activity.
I’m not real sure what you meant there. I’m about 3 miles off the north end of the Addison runway. On race day, that’s about two hours from the track. 25 miles, give or take some.
Actually the airport next to the track is Forth Worth Alliance, and thats what they used on race day. Plenty of activity to track. Check out the Phoinex airports this weekend because thats where race is.
