N1

I often see N1 one at my airport, DCA. Anybody have any idea who it carts around?

FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION
NATL FLIGHT PROGRAM OVERSIGHT OFC
http://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/NNum_Results.aspx?NNumbertxt=1

The seventh airplane to carry that number:
aerovintage.com/current.htm

N1 is used for executive transport for Department of Transportation, including the FAA, Federal Highway Administration, Rail Administration, Maritime Administration, and several other DOT agencies.

There are several photos of it, here on Flightaware. But the software disallows two-character registrations. So it cannot be labeled (and searched) properly.

The same is true of N2.

Any chance that could be modified?

Or if it can’t be modified, how about making the error message something more readable than red on orange?

N1-3 are the only two letter registrations in the world and we never expect to see them for flight tracking, so in the interest of tighter validation we’ve decided to require a minimum of 3 characters.

N4 through N9 are currently reserved. Considering that they may become assigned numbers in the future, would it be possible to have the program translate a Nx number into a 3 character registration by inserting a 0 (zero) after the N?

If I enter N1 the program translates to N03 as an example.

That seems very confusing. :wink: But more seriously it doesn’t really help the issue.

We realize our current policy causes an issue for the photographs of these three planes. We know that military registrations (all numeric) are also an issue.

It’s not always used for executive transport.

In the interest of brevity, I summed up the typical passengers as “executive”, even though they may actually be working stiffs.

I wasn’t being that specific. It’s sometimes used for hazmat transportation.

Thought this might be appropriate to post. Me in front of N1 at ASE in summer of 2008. Word was Bill Clinton was in town.
http://s2.postimage.org/t3v35ss5t/IMG_0328.jpg

Maybe it’s just me, but I think it would have been hilarious if you had giant foam #1 foamhands.com/