Besides being an airline dork, I’m also a weather geek and a political junkie. So I made it a goal to find a way to discuss the current US primaries without going off topic. FlightAware to the rescue!

08_01_09 presidentialprimariesWith the New Hampshire primaries finishing up last night, I thought it would be fun to see where all those private planes went from there. Michigan? South Carolina? Back home? Here’s what I found.

While a few airports around the state had late night flights last night (there were 3 flights between 330a and 6a that went from Pease to Teterboro), most of them came out of Manchester. Can we assume that the 128a departure on a G-IV to Westchester County was Hillary’s plane home? I’m more curious about who went to Vegas at 1244a on a Dassault Mystere. At 951p, someone flew back to Des Moines. Did they forget something in Iowa?

Unlike last week when everyone fled Iowa immediately, some people appear to have stayed the night in New Hampshire before leaving. This morning, an ExpressJet flight left at 925a to go to Greenville/Spartanburg, South Carolina. That is guaranteed to be a candidate on his way to stump down there. How about the XTRA 737 that went down to Myrtle Beach at 935a? Ok, that may just be a beach charter, but maybe not. I can play around with this all day.

Before I go, I’d like to throw in a shamless plug for my day job. If you’re trying to decide how to vote in the primaries this year, we’ve spent the last few months working on an excellent Election Guide at PriceGrabber. Take the Candidate Match and choose how you feel about each issue. We’ll show you how each candidate matches up with your stances. Happy voting (and happy FlightAware hunting)!