U.S. President Barack Obama is said to be furious over the Air Forces decision to fly one of the presidential Boeing 747s over Manhattan on a Monday morning with an F-16 in trail. That would appear to be the lone saving grace from a photo mission that sent New York into a state of panic and left New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg wondering how something like this could be done without his, and the rest of the city's, knowledge. Now, it's not that the Air Force didn't tell anyone about the flight, which happened on a sunny morning about 10 a.m. The Air Force told the New York Police Department but added that it couldn't release the time and nature of the flight to the public and media, no doubt out of security concerns. Mayor Bloomberg was quite naturally upset. "Why the Defense Department wanted to do a photo op right around the site of the World Trade Center catastrophe defies the imagination," Bloomberg said. "Poor judgment would be a nice ways to phrase it. ... Had I known about it, I would have called them right away and asked them not to." The FAA apparently told a Bloomberg staffer who didn't pass along the message.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/news/air-force-one-plane-sets-off-new-york-panic