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!
With 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)!
7 comments on “New Hampshire Aircraft Action”
Given how uptight some folks are about security for Obama, Clinton, and Romney, I wonder if there will be pressure on FlightAware to stop posting this info.
This is the kind of information that could be used by terrorists y’know. Be careful…
If there’s any pressure, it’s certainly not on FlightAware. This information is made public and they’re just packaging it in an easy-to-use format.
You should take note that you are allowed to block your tail number from being displayed in FlightAware if you so choose.
Thanks for the plug about your day job because I just used your website to save a nice chunk of change on a canon camera that I’m taking to SE Asia next week.
I’m actually flying Thai Airways n/s JFK-BKK 17:20 hrs gate to gate on a A340-500. We’re in economy but there’s 36″ of seat pitch. Never flown an ultra long haul before so I’m pretty excited and going to try hard to get upgraded to premium econ.
I saw Huckabee getting into an ExpressJet plane on an NBC news clip not too long ago, so one might plausibly guess that the XJ to SC is him…
I figure the one to LAS is a democrat going to NV for their caucuses…
I heard on CNN during the night of the primaries that someone was expected to go to Vegas to pick up an “important endorsement”
From CNN.Com:
The Nevada local of the Culinary Workers Union gave its official backing to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama today in Las Vegas. The backing of the 60,000-member union is a major boon to Obama’s campaign in a state where there are fewer than half a million registered Democrats and causes are, as elsewhere, generally sparsely attended.
Nevada’s Democratic caucuses will be held January 19.
Those throwing around “terrorism” comments need to humor us with specifics about how exactly this information is harmful.
So I know Obama’s tail number. Then what? Am I going to sit outside the airport fence with a rocket launcher? Am I going to dress up as a ramp worker and lean against a wall hands in pockets looking shifty?
In smaller airports especially there’s enough vigilance by local staff (not TSA) that common sense actually has a presence and would prevent nefarious activity. This isn’t a Phoenix flight school prior to 9/11.
Knowing that Bill Richardson departs (for the last time) to ABQ at 1pm on aircraft XXX is no different than knowing Hillary will speak at city hall at 3pm.