President Obama heading to Miami

Anyone have any information about Air Force One and other Military Planes coming to Miami OCT 26TH… There are temporary flying restrictions from 5pm oct 26 to 10am Oct 27 around the Miami areas, obviously because Obama will be in town… Who has any info?? what runway will they use to land… etc etc…

Before the President arrives, you will have a C-17 come in bringing the limo, suvs and other stuff. It is probably already there (when he came to MSY recently it arrived the day before).

There will be a couple helicopters that will be brought in from somewhere and during the arrival they will hover around the airport checking everything out.

The runway AF1 will use will depend on the wind conditions but they don’t need any special length runway as AF1 is fairly light for these trips (AF1 has landed on runway 19 at MSY before which is 7,000 feet and our shortest runway).

You will also normally have a press plane which used to be JetBlue but now looks like they are using USA 3000, so check for it’s departure from ADW. When it leaves, AF1 is usually not far behind it.

When AF1 is around 40-50 miles from landing, they will start shutting down the airport. Flights that are on final and in the late approach stages will continue to land but others will sent off to hold somewhere. Departures will stop and the whole field will get eerily quiet. You will see a few official ground and secret service vehicles running around but aside from that, nothing and I mean nothing will be moving. If you have a scanner, set it up to scan the approach, tower and ground frequencies as it is quite interesting to hear the coordination to get the airport cleared.

After he lands, it usually takes about 15-20 minutes for everybody to get in the motorcade and leave the airport, a few minutes after that they will start to reopen the airport but it will be a huge bottleneck for a while as so many flights had been stacked up. Even at MSY, there was quite a traffic jam and it was pretty funny listening to some of the pilots trying to get to their gates or get out of town.

It’s a lot of fun and something everybody should see at least once.

I thought a C-5 carried the motorcade. :confused:

Could be but when he came here and I went out to the airport, there was a C-17 sitting at the end of concourse B and think it had to be part of his group as you never see them there otherwise.

Looks like Obama is heading to Jacksonville first,
flightaware.com/live/flight/GWY3 … /KADW/KNIP

yeah hes suppose to go to KNIP (Jacksonville) first… I just heard MARINE 1 switching frequencies with Washington Center… so it looks like hes in the air as we speak

they just said on the news that he’ll be here at about 5:30pm just in time to screw up traffic in South Beach, I’m glad I don’t live in that Latin American Country!! :open_mouth:

I’m glad you dont live here either :smiley:

Ya… born and raised down in Miami. And to add to the spice…cuban. Have a great day flyboy. :smiley:

What’s a cuban boy doing in Arkansas? Haha, just playing, I will be in Lauderdale this weekend and love it.

We have the largest wing of C-17’s here in Charleston and I believe that all of the presidential vehicles and all are always carried by the 17’s. C-5’s are such a waste of money and manpower that I doubt they’re used for anything except ferrying supplies back and forth between here and Afghanistan/Iraq (but I could be wrong). And we’ve been there done that - a couple of weeks ago, Joe Biden came to Kiawah on vacation for a week - flew in right at 5:30 and shut everything down - from the airport to the interstate. I must have left my office at the exact right time because I didn’t notice anything, but several people from my office were stuck in traffic until after 7:00 that day. Then, the next week Biden leaves and when do they decide to depart? 9:00 in the morning - creating several additional traffic jams. Do you think they do this on purpose? So they can look out their plane/car windows and see everyone stopped and know that it’s all 100% because of them? I can’t seem to find any other rational explanation - especially when Biden flew into CHS, then took a motorcade 40 miles to Kiawah and Johns Island Executive (JZI) is right around the corner from Kiawah - that’s where all other Kiawah air traffic arrives and departs from… I guess if it was a security issue, he could have flown into CHS and helicoptered over to JZI, but that makes too much sense for our government to do something like that. Our tax dollars at work!

Thanks to the wife, hiding from redneck hillbillies that wanna string me up by the nearest apple tree. And wishing I WAS IN FLL OR MIA! Too damn cold in this here parts! :wink: SEEEE! I’m even starting to talk like them!!

I’d be happy to trade you- I miss having seasons. We’ve had record heat this last few days. BLAH

There is always at LEAST one C-5 preceding air force one wherever they go. It carries the limos, white top helicopters, and support crew. They usually have two flying along with AF1, playing leap frog with one another so they are always on step ahead of AF1

Ok so this is what we saw! we got to the airport (KMIA) at around 3:30 checking things out driving around, listening to the radio frequencies (ground, etc) We saw a C-17 chillin on a ramp… it looked like it had been there for a while, maybe since yesterday. Also, not far from the C-17 was a G-IV of the United States Air Force, it had the same colors as AF1. Then finally, at around 5:10pm maybe… Air Force One checked in at about 13,000ft… it was pretty cool listening to the air force one pilots over the radio in our car while eating pizza… then miami tower gave them clear to land on runway niner and we could see the huge 747 from a distance… it was amazing… The airport was dead for at least 20min before landing and another 20min after… we put on ground frequency and they told everyone to shut their engines for at least 20min… I thought Air Force One was going to have more company but apparently not, it landed with no other aircraft insight… this was tail 29000… It was pretty cool seeing it live, in the end it was worth the while watching the most expensive plane in the world land with no problems and such a smooth touchdown… I have it on video as soon as I upload it I will post the youtube link…

Thank You

heichrocks@hotmail.com

Wow! Neat report!

Politics aside, the flight crews who transport the leader of the free world do so with the highest level of professionalism, bar none. I was in Bulgaria when Putin came to visit in 2003, and it was a very … um … uninspired display of chaos.

Nice report!

Yeah he always is by himself for the landing but should have been at least 2 helicopters hovering off to the sides.

Amazing how quiet an airport can be when he is on final approach.

At MSY, he really greased the landing and it was sweet.

Looking forward to the vid.

here you go! the videos of the approach and landing… sorry for not zooming… I had 2 cameras one on each hand

Approach:

Air Force One appoaching KMIA - YouTube)

Landing:

Air Force One landing at KMIA - YouTube)

I believe that all of the presidential vehicles and all are always carried by the 17’s.

(http://flightaware.com/photos/view/386215-2b8761c3b8ff4901da481fd2d68ad45a98ce8517/all/sort/date/page/36) Read the description…

Okay, okay - you guys are right I guess. I was basing my statement on what I’ve heard from guys that work at the base here at CHS and going on info that I got from one of my favorite pictures of 2 F-15’s and a C-17 flying over our Cooper River Bridge. (I tried posting the pic, but had more headaches than it was worth). Anyway, friends that work at the base said that they’re always assigned to transport presidential vehicles, so I just assumed that we do all of that. But, we all know what happens when you assume… Sorry for my misinformation.

the C-17 and C-5 have very similar design so its not hard to mistake the two, they’re both high wing, T-tail, four engines, both nose and tail open up for loading, but the C-5 is considerably larger, the 17 isnt small, but it cant hold nearly that of the C-5 galaxy.

Thanks for the pic Will