I went to a place and saw some things

"You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much" (youcantellafinn) 04/01/2019 at 11:47 • Filed to: Blue Angels, mystery plane

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If you’re ever within striking distance of Pensacola you need to visit the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Parking and a dmission are free. It is on base at Pensacola Naval Air Station, so you need to enter through the specified gate and show valid government issued photo ID that complies with the RealID Act. If you show up on a Tuesday or Wednesday the Blue Angels do their practice show starting at 11:30. The website suggest showing up by 9:30 as parking fills up fast. Heed that warning. We showed up at about 11:30, thinking it wouldn’t be that crowded as the schedule showed they would be doing an orientation flight, but not a full practice. We drove around the parking lot for about 20 minutes before we found a spot.

We could see the Blue Angels flying around on our way in, and as we were getting out of the car I caught this pass. I didn’t take a ton of photos since a phone camera isn’t particularly effective at getting worthwhile pictures of plane flying in the distance. Mostly they were flying in pairs, but they did do a couple passes in the diamond. I’m hoping we will get to see them at some point this summer. They do show a few hours away from us, but we might have other obligations that weekend. Hopefully not and we can do a weekend trip to catch the show.

Blue Angels from the parking lot

There is a ton of stuff inside the museum. We were only there for an hour or two and didn’t really come close to seeing the exhibits. I mostly followed the Finnlet around as we wandered aimlessly from one plane to the next.

Naval Aviation Museum

The flight of Blue Angels hanging from the ceiling is pretty cool. I didn’t think to snap a shot when I was in front of them, so you’ll have to make do with a crappy snap from the back.

Old Blue Angels inside the Naval Aviation Museum

Now for the mystery plane spot. I didn’t take a photo as the plane was a mile or two south of us and flying at 5,000-10,000 feet AGL heading SE / ESE . It was a BIG BOI, my first impression was that it was an A380. I spotted it around 10:55 AM Central Time on 3/29. It was a four engined airliner, had a low wing and was painted white. I couldn’t make out a bump, so it didn’t appear to be a 747. Using FlightAware and Flightradar24 on my phone I couldn’t come up with any airplane in that location at the time. Just now I fired up Flightradar24 on the computer and played back everything at that time with no success. There are simply no planes that show up that close to the beach. If anybody here has mad skills with one of the flight tracking apps/websites, it would be awesome to figure out what I was looking at. There is a flight track across the Gulf of Mexico, but it is much further south, and the planes flying that would have been at much higher altitude. I’m completely baffled by this one at the moment.

Jordan and the Slowrunner, Boomer Intensifies > You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much 04/01/2019 at 11:56

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Would military planes be on flight tracker? There is also Eglin AFB just down the road. 

facw > You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much 04/01/2019 at 12:05

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Was it obvious it had a double deck? For four engine airliners, there are obviously a bunch of C-135 variants still in use, though they are normally mostly if not completely gray these days with current paint schemes. Obviously the A340 would be an option as well for a single decked airliner, but I’d expect those to show up on flight trackers.

415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°) > Jordan and the Slowrunner, Boomer Intensifies 04/01/2019 at 12:46

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No they would not

You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much > Jordan and the Slowrunner, Boomer Intensifies 04/01/2019 at 13:00

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No, military planes wouldn’t show up.  I’m leaning towards it not being military because of the low wings and definitely white paint.

You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much > facw 04/01/2019 at 13:03

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It definitely looked to be a full double decker, the 747 hump is pretty distinctive and I didn’t see that. The fuselage also looked much bigger diameter wise than a single decker. The paint appeared to be white, not the low vis grey of a military plane. I checked the flight trackers for A340, A380 and 747 type aircraft and came up blank.

facw > You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much 04/01/2019 at 13:05

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Any chance of it being partially white, like this:

facw > You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much 04/01/2019 at 13:10

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Hmm, the A340 is of course still a widebody so it would look taller and fatter than a C-135 , though I’d expect it to show up (there are privately owned ones, I don’t remember if private planes can mask themselves from these services).

There’s also of course the possibility of an Il-96 but that would be a very rare sighting indeed, and would make no sense at low altitude:

You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much > facw 04/01/2019 at 13:13

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It was all white , and the engines were modern high bypass engines. I can’t recall seeing any obvious color on the vertical tail, so it may not have had the tail painted with livery which would be strange for an A380.

The Open Skies planes are the scheduled overflights of Russia, aren’t they?

facw > You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much 04/01/2019 at 13:21

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Yep . The Open Skies treaty allows overflights of the territories of signatories (in order to decrease tension through transparency ) , so we do this for Russia and other nations. The nation being overflown also has the option to provide an aircraft rather than allow a foreign aircraft.

You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much > facw 04/01/2019 at 13:42

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The altitude and track has me thinking it was a military flight .  The aircraft color and size makes me think it was civilian.  We were right down the road from NAS Pensacola, Eglin AFB is a short flight down the coast, and Keesler and Tyndall AFB’s aren’t that far away either.

Ash78, voting early and often > You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much 04/01/2019 at 14:49

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That museum is great, I’ve been there 4-5 times and still haven’t seen everything. You picked a good time to visit, since summer is hot as ballz, especially on the tarmac waiting for the Blues.

Long shot guess on the plane you saw: Airbus A340 being used as a private jet. They’re huge, though not double decker, and a sizable portion of them are in wealthy hands because most carriers don’t think they’re worth the running costs.

Also — c heck out this short piece on the museum I wrote a few years ago, you’ll enjoy:

https://oppositelock.kinja.com/the-resurrection-of-the-photo-banshee-1722750850

You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much > Ash78, voting early and often 04/01/2019 at 16:01

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That’s an awesome story about the Photo Banshee.

Could have been a private A340, but I’m leaning towards it being military. Most private planes will show up on the flight tracker apps. It was probably a later KC-135 variant with modern engines. Something about eyewitness accounts generally being full of crap, sun in my eyes, excuses, plane was closer than I thought, etc. made it look white and bigger than it was.

Ash78, voting early and often > You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much 04/01/2019 at 16:11

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Yep, and with NAS Pensacola, Eglin, and Tyndall all along the same stretch, it could have been something odd. A lot of military ECM jets have weird radomes on top. Could have even been heading for MacDill AFB in Tampa. The Gulf is a huge crossroads.