[109255] in Cypherpunks
FC: Air Force One (was: Clinton's trip home)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert Hettinga)
Mon Mar 15 12:01:58 1999
Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1999 11:33:48 -0500
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Reply-To: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
They don't call it the imperial presidency for nothing, I guess.
Cheers,
RAH
--- begin forwarded text
Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1999 09:20:18 -0500
To: politech@vorlon.mit.edu
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Subject: FC: Air Force One (was: Clinton's trip home)
Sender: owner-politech@vorlon.mit.edu
Reply-To: declan@well.com
A number of people have asked me about what it's like to fly on Air Force One.
Whatever plane the president is flying on at the moment is called Air Force
One. But the mammoth 747 that lives in a special hangar at Andrews Air
Force base, 25 miles south of Washington DC, is what most people think of
-- and the model for the recent Harrison Ford movie of the same name.
That plane has an entirely custom interior with rooms instead of rows of
seats. The president and staff quarters are at the front, followed by the
press area, and the galley at the far back. Sometimes the president wanders
back for on- or off-the-record chats with reporters. The baggage and other
gear is stored on the level beneath, as you'd expect, and there's enough
room to walk there if you duck.
>From a passenger's perspective, it's a great flight: We get to choose our
movie from a stack of still-in-the-theaters tapes, and the food, seats, and
service are superb. Best of all are the lack of rules. No fussy
stewardesses run around telling you to buckle your seatbelt or turn off
laptops.
When you fly AF1 you don't have to worry about other air traffic;
everything else gets out of your way. Airports pretty much close down when
the president is in town -- you'll remember the furor over the First
Haircut a while ago. And forget those dawdling commercial takeoffs. This is
a speedy military flight, and it feels like the pilot points the nose
straight up in the sky.
Smaller airports don't have long enough runways to handle the 747. This was
the case when we flew into Hope, Arkansas on Friday morning. We took a C-9
(painted the same white-and-blue as its larger cousin) instead; I believe
the civilian equivalent is the DC-9. The galley was comparatively tiny, so
the food wasn't as good and there were no in-flight movies. But it was much
more cozy. Clinton was sitting about five seats in front of us, chatting
with Rep. Sandlin, a Congressman with a penchant for producing inane press
releases such as "East Texas Dairy Producers Meet With Sandlin in
Washington DC."
Then there are the bone-rattling helicopters. When I covered the
president's trip to the USS Truman, I flew on a military helicopter from
AF1 to the aircraft carrier and was half-deaf (even though I used earplugs)
for hours. There are also stories to tell about motorcade screwups -- such
as when the local police in New Mexico forgot to close the interstate
highway our motorcade was entering at high speeds -- but those can wait for
another day.
-Declan
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-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
