GHETTO FLYERS - Aviation News, Airplanes, Photos, R/C Airplanes, Rockets, Aerospace: August 2007

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Air Refueling Gone Wrong...

Russian Antonov An-124 Makes Rare Appereance at West Palm Beach Airport

So I'm driving on I-95 around Palm Beach Gardens, when I spot a giant plane between clouds heading in a South-Westerly direction. As the excellent plane spotter that I am, I immediately see that it is not your average airliner. What I have just seen is the gigantic Russian Antonov 124. It was at low altitude and judging by it's heading it was going to Palm Beach International. At first I thought "Nah!" that plane is too big to land there. But then I realized that there is no other airport close by that could probably accommodate it, and military cargo planes usually are made to land on short unprepared runways.

I called Bagger Bill to tell him the great news, and lucky me I had my camera with me, so I decided to scrap my immediate plans to go to work, and head to PBI to see if I could photograph this strange visitor. I couldn't get there on time to see it land, but sure enough there it was lumbering over all the puny executive jets... So here are two of the pictures I took. Unfortunately they parked it in a place where I couldn't get too close. I wish I would've had the time to see it take off, but I have to have lunch and get to work before I no longer have a job. And I almost didn't take my camera with me today...

If anyone has information as to what this airplane was doing at PBI today, I surely would like to know. My guess is that it was either refueling or had some technical difficulties. I know NASA hires this plane to ferry rocket parts to Cape Canaveral which is about two hours north of here. Anyhow it was a treat to see.