"Talabani flew into Grand Junction’s Walker Field on a 757 jet at about 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, according to KREX-TV. From there, a motorcade consisting of more than 15 vehicles and an ambulance wheeled the president to Aspen, where it was spotted driving through the Roaring Fork Valley approximately two hours later.
“Aspen is crawling with Secret Service agents – a ResortQuest employee said 26 Aspen properties were booked for 38 agents through his agency – as well as sniper teams, and other heavily armed forces, law enforcement officers said.”
That’s interesting. We had a Royal Jordanian royal flight arrive here at BWI last night, and it wasn’t blocked- http://flightaware.com/live/flight/RJA500
Plus a Kuwaiti G5 that’s been going between IAD, ADW, and JFK hasn’t been blocked either. Of course the Iraqi president would probably have more of a reason to have his flight blocked however.
Would he have arrived on a USAF 757 (C-32 I think the designator is?)
As I understand it, no flight operating with an airline’s callsigns would be blocked. The flight plans don’t have registration numbers (basis for blocking) associated with the flights.
If he flew in on a USAF 757 (which is possible), you’re left with the fact that all military flights are blocked (with a few minor exceptions: ICE, etc.)
The final analysis is we don’t know how he got into KGJT or how he left. Some things in life are meant to be mysteries.
Thanks for the correction, Mark. Could a single RJA flight be blocked by the FAA or would the entire RJA fleet be blocked? Is there a “foreign tail” in the flight plan that would lead to just one commercial flight being blocked? Are FAA blocks permanent or can a flight be blocked for only one specified day? (Same questions for NBAA.)
I’m not as familiar with the FAA block list as I am with the NBAA BARR program. The FAA block list is a black box to us; we know it exists and what types of flights are generally blocked (most military, national security, etc) but we don’t know specifically what idents they’re blocking or when they’re being blocked.
With the NBAA BARR program, RJA could block just individual flight numbers or all RJA flights. For airline flights, we don’t recieve any information about the underlying tail number; any flight using an airline ident can be blocked using that ident. The NBAA list is updated about once a month, so you could block your tail number one month and unblock it the next.
MAF is Mexican Air Force. MAF is Mission Aviation Fellowship. Unfortunately, they have the same three letter code. MAF is official while MAF may not be.
The problem is when the military (foreign and domestic) have identical prefixes as civilian operators. Here’s an example: flightaware.com/live/flight/ICE1 It’s truly doubtful the Icelandair is operating a Thunderbolt.
There is a forum topic on this. Use search to see if it is still active.
The name of the air force in spanish is Fuerza Aerea Mexicana
MAF is Mexican Air Force. MAF is Mission Aviation Fellowship. Unfortunately, they have the same three letter code. MAF is official while MAF may not be.
Know of any other duplicated three-letter codes, Dami?
