An amateur photographer and plane spotter in England was among the first to identify Air Force One as the distinctive blue and white jet airliner carried President Trump and first lady Melania Trump on a highly secret trip to Iraq for a visit with US troops.
It all started with the white contrails in a blue sky.
“I literally stepped out, and I could see a trail coming towards me and thought, ‘Let’s have a look at what’s on the end of that.’ And then I looked through the viewfinder and thought, ‘This is worth photographing, it’s not just a normal airliner,'” , describing the sight from his kitchen window in Sheffield on Wednesday morning.
Immediately, Meloy, an IT project manager who has been keeping an eye on the skies for 40 years, knew it wasn’t any ordinary plane.
“I was absolutely amazed when that came past … I knew it was one of the two VC-25s,” Meloy told the cable network. “I had no idea who was on it, in my mind I was thinking, ‘It must be someone pretty important.'”
He snapped a picture with his Canon 7D from about 25 miles away.
There are only two VC-25s in the world, and the modified Boeing 747-200 jets alternate as Air Force One to ferry the commander-in-chief on his travels around the world.
The president’s plane, which typically uses the call sign “AF1,” had already caught the attention of other aviation enthusiasts like “CivMilAir,” a plane tracker in England, even though it showed up with the call sign “RCH 358,” referred to as “Reach 358.”
The call sign is used by the military to designate cargo planes.
Air Force One swept across England at a consistent 31,000 feet.
Meloy posted a photo of the plane on his Flickr account to see if anybody else noticed the aircraft.
Social media users expressed skepticism or simply told him he was completely off target because Air Force One uses a different call sign, Meloy said.
“So all I said was I know what I’ve seen, it’s a VC-25, there’s only two of those in the world — that’s all I can tell you. There’s my photograph,” he said.
Despite Meloy being careful not to spark rumors, his photo caused speculation to swirl that Trump was on his way to Iraq or Afghanistan.
A few hours later, Air Force One touched down at al-Asad air base just west of Baghdad.
Reporters who traveled with Trump were told not to report on his visit until after they had departed Iraq.
Trump even remarked on the lengths taken to keep his trip on the down low.
“If you had seen what we had to go through with the darkened plane, with all windows closed, with no lights on whatsoever anywhere. Pitch black. I have never seen anything like it,” Trump told reporters.