irrational fear of flying

[Bewheels]

Heard a plane pass over a few days ago (I'm in central New Hampshire). Quite loud. It was pretty low for some reason, so you could clearly see four underwing engines. I assumed it was a 747 cargo coming out of MHT (does that happen?) but it looked... well, odd. Stumpier than a 747. A quick check of Flight Aware revealed it to be one of these big guys. I've never seen an An-124 before. Apparently it was at Pease (used to be an air base, now a civilian airport at the NH seacoast). I wonder why it was there?

Антонов_Ан-124_9773054055093,_М&#108.jpg

Do current US-Russia tensions impact contracting these fellas?

I don't have a direct answer however, I lived on the NH coast up until 3 years ago, and my office was on the decommissioned Peace base. Our office building was about 1/2 of a mile from the actual runway. A lot of large aircraft training exercises take place there. Touch and goes, midair refueling, etc. It is conceivable that it was there for training and was coming out of Pease when you saw it, considering it is not too far from MHT.

Fun fact - The Peace base was considered a backup landing site for the space shuttle because the runway is 2 miles long.

Fun fact 2 - They used to hold an annual airshow at Pease. The Thunderbirds and Blue Angles would rotate through on different years. I never attended the actual shows because I didn't have to. The different acts would start practicing a few days before the show to get used to the airspace and they used our building as one of the touch points (almost literally). If we had a meeting during their practice times, I would have to tell whoever was on the other end of the video, "This better be highly interesting/important to keep our attention. Otherwise reschedule. You are competing with jet fighters showing off outside our windows".

Fun fact 3 - The Pease base is/was on the list of Superfund sites. The water for the base, and business tradeport the base became after it was decommissioned, comes from on-base wells which were highly contaminated from decades of dumping jet fuel, solvents, paint stripers, etc into the ground . I am sure this is why I am bald on top and ride much slower now.

[monadnocky]

... aaand the An-124 just went over my house again. Such a distinctive noise. Actively tracking it on Flightradar to see where it goes - again, it came out of the Pease airport, again.
So curious what they're up to.

Update: the website booted me off right as the flight was over the general NYC area, and I'll never re-aquire it with the hundreds of flights shown.
Oh well. It remains a mystery.

[monadnocky]

... aaand the An-124 just went over my house again. Such a distinctive noise. Actively tracking it on Flightradar to see where it goes - again, it came out of the Pease airport, again.
So curious what they're up to.

Update: the website booted me off right as the flight was over the general NYC area, and I'll never re-aquire it with the hundreds of flights shown.
Oh well. It remains a mystery.

Update to the previous update: Found it. It is heading to Mobile, Alabama of all places. How odd.

[bigbill]

My son aced all his instrument simulators, so he'll do a cross-country flight in the next few weeks. When he flies, he is alone, with no instructor. He is trying to figure out a route with three legs in each direction with airports having a government contract for fuel and support. At the end of the outbound legs, he'll get to spend the weekend before flying back on Monday.

[Mabouya]

Sometimes I see single military jets landing or taking off from SUS (Spirit Airport, just west of St Louis MO) so I assume they have a contract for that.

https://www.spiritairport.com/

If he does go through there, he might fly relatively close to my house.

Some other guys who stop by every now and then: (not my house in the background)

[bigbill]

Sometimes I see single military jets landing or taking off from SUS (Spirit Airport, just west of St Louis MO) so I assume they have a contract for that.

https://www.spiritairport.com/

If he does go through there, he might fly relatively close to my house.

Some other guys who stop by every now and then: (not my house in the background)

One of the jet training bases is in Meridian, MS, so it would make sense that the students would fly to smaller fields like the one near St Louis.