Originally Posted by
Jesse
They want their adoring fans to be able to welcome them at the civilian airports. When Clinton was elected Little Rock AFB spent some nice coin on getting their Base Ops up to snuff with a VIP room in anticipation of his coming through there a lot. I don't think he ever saw it--always came into LIT where the helicopters would take him away to other parts of the state. All the support came out from the base up north...cops, airstairs, etc. Maybe because of a fear of fuel contamination, but they would even drive the fuel trucks out from the AFB for Air Force One instead of taking fuel from LIT. Basically, a major PITA when he could have just landed at LRF.
Here's my Air Farce One story:
I was in the NH Air Guard up at Pease AFB back when Geo. Bush 1 was the Pres. As you may remember, he has as summer house in Kennebunkport, Maine, and he used it quite a bit. He would fly AF 1 into Pease, usually preceded by a C141 full of black Chevy Surburbans and two Marine helo's who would drop him on his front lawn at the summer house.
Well, one morning we are out flying, doing our regular mission, ie. fly to upstate NY and do a refueling with some FB111's out of Plattsburg or something, but when we return to Pease, we dial in the ATIS, and it says the field is CLOSED!
WTFark?? It's CAVU...and it's Closed?? We call Ops, they say, Oh Yeah, Bush is coming, the field is closed until after he departs. We say, Closed for WHO?? Vistors? We are BASED at PSM! And we all have TOP Secret clearances, and WE ARE ON THE SAME TEAM!!
They say, Nope, you can't come in here right now. We ask, "When will he arrive/depart for Kennebunkport?" They say, "Well, he was supposed to be here an hour ago...but we don't think he's left Andrews yet."
OK, we are 50 miles out of PSM, and he's not left Andrews yet...and we can't land...at OUR OWN BASE?? We could be parked, and I'll be HOME before he get's anywhere near Pease!
Well, we didn't have 2-3 hours of holding fuel, so we went to Bangor and had lunch, then after the POTUS was safely delivered to Kennebunkport, we were allowed to return...4 hours later.
We saw wayyy too much of him in his 4 years, every summer he'd go up to Kennebunkport at least 2-3 times. A friend of mine took me up in a hellicopter once and we buzzed his beach house, but he wasn't there at the time or we'd probably been shot at.