As I understand it, Air Force One is the designation given to any aircraft carrying the President. If he’s on a two-man helicopter for some reason, that would be “Air Force One”.
But there’s also a plane that generally seems to serve as Air Force One, the big jetliner thing with fancy medical stuff and a communications hub. What’s this called when the President isn’t using it? What if both that plane and another aircraft that’s currently carrying the President are in flight; is the normally used plane AF1 or is it the one actually carrying him?
AF 1 is the callsign used by the ATC and whatnot. It moves with The Man. Most usually his helicopter is Marine Corps One, when George Bush landed on the aircraft carrier* he did it in Navy One.
The transport just uses a regular callsign when the Prez is not aboard.
*He took a lot of guff for this, but if elected, I pledge to do a few carrier landings on my first day in office. Just for giggles.
I suspect you may be drawing a distinction without a difference here. But I’d like to know what someone with AF experience has to say about terminology.
I have a WAG that it’s akin to “C/chairman” of a group. Joe is elected Chairman of the Imaginary Ferret Fanciers of Ontario. As a result, he normally presides at their meetings. When he wishes to address the group as a member, he calls on someone else, say Fred, to take the chair while he speaks. Joe does not cease being Chairman, but Fred is addressed as the Chairman during the time he chairs the meeting.
Likewise (my supposition): The specially equipped aircraft dedicated for use by the President is designated Air Force One. When the President is being transported by another aircraft, that one temporarily receives the designation of AF1. But the plane set apart for that purpose doesn’t cease being AF1; it simply sits awaiting his return from the other flight.
Except that when it is used to transport someone else it is not called Air Force One. When it is the Vice President it is called Air Force Two. Not the Death Star as some would think.
This situation was the reason for my last question; imagine that there are two planes preparing to land. One is the plane usually designated AF1, with all the fancy gizmos. The other is a normal passenger jet, which happens to be carrying the President.
Ground Control radios in; “Air Force One, you are go to land on runway 5.” Which plane lands? You need a way to distinguish between the two. But **Paul in Saudi ** answered it (thanks :)); the normally-AF1-plane is called by its usual callsign when the top guy isn’t in it. Which, if i’m understanding Wikipedia correctly, is VC-25A-28000 or -29000, since there’s actually two.
The “normal passenger jet” can only be called Air Force One if it is an Air Force plane. If it is an army plane it is called Army One, Coast Guard it is called Coast Guard One etc. I have no idea if the callsign would change if the president found himself on a civilian plane. Not sure if this has happened since air travel became routine.
You got a couple of basic things wrong. The helicopters that transport the president are called Marine One because they are partially operated by the Marine Corps but also under Secret Service scrutiny among other things.
Also, there isn’t just one super-fitted 747 that is a presidential travel suite as well as a nuclear command post capable of staying in the air indefinitely. There are two identical ones of those and I would imagine that there is probably some smaller jet somewhere that can do the same job from much smaller runways but is kept secret. Air Force One planes are operated by the Air Force.
Anyway, the basic idea is that “Air Force One” is a designation for Air Traffic Control and will initiate special protocols. One of the most chilling things that I have read is that Johnson was quickly boarded for a Dallas - Washington bound flight shortly after JFK was assassinated. He was sworn in as President in flight. After he was sworn in, Air Traffic Control immediately changed the call sign to “Air Force One” for the inbound D.C. 707. I don’t know if it is true but it does follow the proper protocols and illustrates a different type of indication for change of command.
A couple of years back, Popular Mechanics ran an article about the presidential limo, describing it as loaded with enough communications equipment that it almost qualified as “Cadillac One”.
I’m not sure about that. VC-25A is the Air Force designation of a B747-200B, in the same way that a DC3 was called a Dakota and various other names when in the military.
The 28000 and 29000 are tail numbers which I’m not sure would be used as a call sign. Whenever I’ve seen any military aircraft they’ve gone by some non-aircraft-specific callsign generally related to their current task. I suspect, but don’t know, that these aircraft might be called “Envoy 3”, “Predator 75”, “Big Tits 2000”, or whatever other call sign suited at the time when they’re not carrying VIP 1.
Does any other country have (or has ever had) an Air Force One type program? I don’t mean a nice head of state plane. The twin 747’s are flying presiential platforms with a full control war room capable of running even a nuclear war for an indefinite amount of time plus full living and communication facilities.
They are also not under full control of the president. During 9/11, Bush was almost forceably taken to a waiting Air For One plane and moved to Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier City, Louisiana. Many people found that odd but not me because I grew up in the general area. We always knew somehow that it was an incredibly powerful nuclear command facility and sources today suggest it once (or now?) had the highest concentration of nukes in the western hemisphere and possibly the world. There is some kind of nuclear ready control bunker there like you see in the movies.
Everything is pre-scripted by bodies outside of the White House and I don’t think the president could really resist what other military and other bodies are told to do to protect their safety. Dick Cheney was forcefully picked up by the Secret Service and carried to a more secure location as the 911 planes threatened the White House. I am not sure what would happen if he had started throwing punches. The Presidential Secret Service detail tends to be huge and strong men.
My two questions are:
Do other foreign leaders have moving command centers?
Do the president and other top leaders have a choice about where they are going in the event a national security event occurs? It seems like other bodies tell them what they have to do to protect the nation and they make that happen.
I seriously doubt that if the President or VP refused to go along with the Secret Service requests that they would be forced. Presidents have shown a willingness to go along with them because they know it’s the right thing to do. But no one is going to force the President to do something they don’t want to. They serve the President, not the other way around.
Did air force one actually use the callsign air force one during 9/11? Seems a bit stupid to be letting other people know where it is during an “attack” (even a piddling one like that).
You are correct in that it would never come to that. I expect that all vice presidents and presidents are advised that the Secret Service and other bodies know much more about what is happening than they do. However, Dick Cheney was physically picked up by the Secret Service during a meeting when the news that the White House might be targeted very soon during 9/11. He was taken right away to a secret location that the public still does not know. It was likely the successor to the Greenbier emergency government relocation facility in West Virginia.. That facility was decommissioned when a Washington Post reporter outed it but there is a new one somewhere within helicopter range from Washington. The V.P. doesn’t have direct control over the Secret Service and the President only does indirectly in a way that would take time to overcome. I don’t know what would happen if Cheney refused to go but the office and facilities belong to the American people rather than who is holding power at the time.
The plane Johnson boarded in Dallas was the plane being used as Air Force One. Both Johnson and Kennedy were in Dallas that day. Johnson was sworn in as President before the plane left the ground. That aircraft is actually retired and is part of a museum in Dayton, Ohio now.
When Nixon resigned, he was actually in the air on Air Force One when his resignation took effect and Ford was sworn in. When that happened the callsign for the flight changed midflight.
I am a perpetual flight student and an aviation nut. I even read air traffic control procedure books for fun. It is an interesting question. U.S. and Canadian are traffic controllers came through in a big way during 9/11.. They rerouted 4500 flights at a peak rate of 1 a second and had 75% of them on the ground within 1 hour. All traffic including inbound international flights were handled fluidly. The followed their procedures but also used experience to fill up one airport after another and then repeat the strategy over and over using creativity.
The FAA had some meetings after 9/11 and tried to formalize what controllers accomplished during 9/11 in case something similar happened again. They could not do it because the controllers operated on instinct and spontaneous problem solving to get things done in a way that can’t be put in a manual.
The interesting part of the question is how controller knew that Air Force One was really Air Force One. It was flying to a military base and ATC can be picked up on any Radio Shack scanner. I have one that cost $90 and you might think that any person with one could figure that out. More interesting is how ATC was notified that Osama Bin Ladin’s relatives were one of the only ones allowed to make an international flight out of the U.S. after 9/11 when U.S. airspace was effectively shut down. They must have some procedure for that type of thing.
Good to know. I figured my facts might be slightly off and that is why I gave the disclaimer. However the procedures were right in respect slight relevant to the OP.
Britain doesn’t. The RAF maintains a Royal flight for transporting HMQ, and sometimes government people, but they are just regular planes. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything definitive about current command and control in the UK. I’d imagine that there are bunkers under Whitehall for the PM to use if things go tits-up. These things are probably Official Secrets. Mind you, Nato Northern Command at Pitreavie used to hav<<No Carrier>>