It's a fun mental exercise to know that the final answer is landing while reading the answers that forcefully argue that the plane is taking off. Some of the "evidence" to support that the plane is taking off is very persuasive.
Well, that's interesting. The person who originally wrote the Aviation SE question was claiming to be the original photographer and saying he couldn't remember if the plane was taking off or landing... But, if the internet had access to the whole sequence of images, surely he did as well? So why was he asking? Was it just a puzzle?
EDIT: From a different comment, it's clear that the photographer later found the whole series of pictures AFTER asking the question, and posted them online. So the photographer was confused, but later found the rest of his photos, which definitively show the plane LANDING. Case closed.
I remember this showing up in the SO sidebar a long time ago (what a time-suck that thing is). At the time, I remember thinking that some of these people must be trolling - and I still do.
For example, the people arguing that the wheels have already touched down. It seems abundantly obvious to me that the wheels have NOT touched down, and that the small strip of black asphalt running parallel to the wheels is a taxi-way in the background which has lots of small aircraft sitting on it. I get the uneasy feeling that anybody that sees it any differently is just trying to gaslight me. But, then, that was also the feeling I got about the blue dress, and that turned out to be all too genuine... People genuinely saw it differently, they weren't trolling.
To me, the lack of heat blur behind the engines seems to be reasonably conclusive evidence that it's landing... But who knows.
Based on the later-discovered extra photos, it appears that the taxi-way in the background (which, as you say, is clearly much further from the camera than the landing plane due to the tiny small aircraft parked along it) is nearly perfectly overlapping with the actual runway, so that at the moment of touchdown the wheels look like they are touching both the runway and the background taxi-way. The larger blacktop with yellow lines in the foreground of the picture is a second taxi-way (closer to the camera than the runway, and clearly offset from it visually). This in particular can be seen by the fourth photo in the time series, the one taken immediately after the OP photo.
The quirky features of OP photo are such a nerd snipe, and the later finding the complete photo series is just so convenient, that I'm tempted to think the whole Stack Exchange post was planned.
As one person pointed out on the site, the shadow of the airplane can just be made out on the actual runway, while it is clearly missing from the ramp / taxiway in the foreground.
The wheels are, in fact, off the ground, but only just, as revealed by the smoke in the next image of the sequence.
I, too, was convinced by the absense of heat blur.
> I remember this showing up in the SO sidebar a long time ago (what a time-suck that thing is).
I ended up installing this Chrome extension to block the "Hot Network Questions" parts of Stack Exchange because I found that I was getting distracted by them too often.
Do you think it's possible that Air Force One Pilots are instructed to land at unconventional spots on the runway to foil potential threats? Perhaps even to land at different spots on the runway on different landings?
I know it sounds far-fetched, but my mom who was the "Cultural Affairs Officer" at the US Embassy in San Jose Costa Rica was instructed to take a different route from home to the embassy and back every day, and to try to depart at slightly different times each trip. This was in the late 80s when Costa Rica was a relatively safe place (it's even safer today).
My uninformed intuition would be that trying to land the plane differently each time would introduce more risk than it would protect against (and what threats would it even protect against?).
You might be right with that suspicion, but if the person responsible for procedures puts up a rule demanding unpredictable runway usage they have done their job Very Well. A cautious "this might not be such a good idea actually" however will make them seem weak in certain eyes and might even make them some personal enemies, for displaying lack of trust in the pilots' abilities. I suspect that nobody without the career instincts to intuitively know those things will come anywhere close to that plane.
I've never been able to find it again, but I distinctly remember seeing video of Air Force One taking off from Sarasota on September 11, 2001. In my memory it was far louder than normal and climbed at a very steep angle.
I've always wondered if I was imagining that or if they really did act more aggressively to gain altitude quickly.
I know in combat zones military cargo planes haul ass at much steeper angles than commercial flights because comfort is not an issue. Mostly to get out of rocket/missle range. Even small arms fire can damage engines.
on 9/11 it would have made sense to tell everyone to strap TF in we're going out hot!
Maybe if they were landing in a risky country (the presidents have visited warzones like Iraq), but even then, they would ensure the airfield and a 10km radius around it would be clear and secure. If they cannot ensure that, how would landing in an unconventional spot improve security? Every part of an AF1 flight is tightly orchestrated on the one hand, and on the other, they would keep the exact flight route and timing a need-to-know secret.
> Do you think it's possible that Air Force One Pilots are instructed to land at unconventional spots on the runway to foil potential threats?
No. It's hard enough to nail a landing to pick the "right spot" especially when you don't need it
If there's a threat on ground the best thing you can do is stay on air, not try to land on a different spot of the same runway (but yes, given some types of obstructions you can try to use only part of the runway, I'm not sure if they prefer you landing after it or in front of it, but I think the latter makes more sense - depending on the type and position of obstruction of course)
I politely disagree with you. Landings in an aircraft that you have flown for any length of time are not all that hard. In many cases I have been in aircraft that "land long" so as to not have to taxi 3 miles (literally) to get to the gate or parking area.
I would imagine there is a bit of risk mitigation with AF1 as it relates to taxiing on the ground. As you state (correctly I surmise) the best place for AF1 to be is in the air. The worst, is unprotected on the ground. The secret service is great, but I don't see them clearing a mile of taxiway in multiple directions for the safety of the aircraft.
Best to land long, turn off at taxiway and be at your destination with proper equipment nearby as soon as possible.
The full-blown practice of this (so things like losing a tail) is referred poetically referred to the Russian intelligence services as dry-cleaning (Proverka? I forget the exact russian term)
> "There is motion blur on the traffic cone suggesting that camera was moving right and slightly down. There is no blur on the plane itself since the camera was locked to the plane's motion. So I deduce a landing photo."
I think the key to understanding the allure is by extending your line of reasoning even further.
Why play piano? There are plenty of recordings of people who play better than I ever will.
Why play chess? I will never be able to beat my computer anyway.
Why paint portraits? I will never be as good as Rembrandt, and my camera is infinitely better anyway.
I think the point of the activity is not "I will take the best picture of this plane/the moon that anyone has ever taken". Rather, it's "I will take the best picture that I ever took".
At this point just stay in your bed and wait for death. Everything you'll ever do has been done better in the past. Humans need to keep busy and build/do shit, most of it is useless in the grand scheme of things
They don’t always look the same though. Even as a very casual airplane enthusiast, I sometimes like to look back at older pictures of a plane to see what it looked like older paint schemes or under previous owners. Also, the planes/cars are somewhere in space and time, and the picture captures that.
My quick guess was landing for the simple reason that the plane would very quickly rotate through that particular attitude taking off, but would travel much further in that attitude on landing.
I don't understand why nobody asked OP the exact date and time this picture was taken, which they would certainly have if they are the original photographer.
With a date and time you can easily cross reference press schedules (released by the White House) or flight plan data (archived by FlightRadar24 among others) or Twitter posts or other published photographs or....etc. AF1 isn't exactly a stealth fighter; its location at least domestically is rather well tracked.
Readit News
https://i.stack.imgur.com/QTrv2.jpg
It's a fun mental exercise to know that the final answer is landing while reading the answers that forcefully argue that the plane is taking off. Some of the "evidence" to support that the plane is taking off is very persuasive.
[1] https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/34586/is-this-p...
EDIT: From a different comment, it's clear that the photographer later found the whole series of pictures AFTER asking the question, and posted them online. So the photographer was confused, but later found the rest of his photos, which definitively show the plane LANDING. Case closed.
For example, the people arguing that the wheels have already touched down. It seems abundantly obvious to me that the wheels have NOT touched down, and that the small strip of black asphalt running parallel to the wheels is a taxi-way in the background which has lots of small aircraft sitting on it. I get the uneasy feeling that anybody that sees it any differently is just trying to gaslight me. But, then, that was also the feeling I got about the blue dress, and that turned out to be all too genuine... People genuinely saw it differently, they weren't trolling.
To me, the lack of heat blur behind the engines seems to be reasonably conclusive evidence that it's landing... But who knows.
The quirky features of OP photo are such a nerd snipe, and the later finding the complete photo series is just so convenient, that I'm tempted to think the whole Stack Exchange post was planned.
https://i.stack.imgur.com/QTrv2.jpg
The taxi-way is the foreground - the wheels do indeed seem like they have touched down or are millimetres away
The wheels are, in fact, off the ground, but only just, as revealed by the smoke in the next image of the sequence.
I, too, was convinced by the absense of heat blur.
I ended up installing this Chrome extension to block the "Hot Network Questions" parts of Stack Exchange because I found that I was getting distracted by them too often.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stack-block/oaimjd...
Had to do this as well because they were just too distracting.
[1] https://skyvector.com/files/tpp/2014/pdf/00384AD.PDF
I know it sounds far-fetched, but my mom who was the "Cultural Affairs Officer" at the US Embassy in San Jose Costa Rica was instructed to take a different route from home to the embassy and back every day, and to try to depart at slightly different times each trip. This was in the late 80s when Costa Rica was a relatively safe place (it's even safer today).
I've always wondered if I was imagining that or if they really did act more aggressively to gain altitude quickly.
on 9/11 it would have made sense to tell everyone to strap TF in we're going out hot!
Deleted Comment
No. It's hard enough to nail a landing to pick the "right spot" especially when you don't need it
If there's a threat on ground the best thing you can do is stay on air, not try to land on a different spot of the same runway (but yes, given some types of obstructions you can try to use only part of the runway, I'm not sure if they prefer you landing after it or in front of it, but I think the latter makes more sense - depending on the type and position of obstruction of course)
I would imagine there is a bit of risk mitigation with AF1 as it relates to taxiing on the ground. As you state (correctly I surmise) the best place for AF1 to be is in the air. The worst, is unprotected on the ground. The secret service is great, but I don't see them clearing a mile of taxiway in multiple directions for the safety of the aircraft.
Best to land long, turn off at taxiway and be at your destination with proper equipment nearby as soon as possible.
> "There is motion blur on the traffic cone suggesting that camera was moving right and slightly down. There is no blur on the plane itself since the camera was locked to the plane's motion. So I deduce a landing photo."
(The same holds for cars).
Chances are most of your hobbies are as ridiculous as that for most people out of the hobby
It used to be done simply because there weren't as many forms of superior entertainment as there are now.
Looking at the moon, that's one thing. But taking a picture of the moon? Go to NASA or Wikipedia for a great high-res picture.
Why play piano? There are plenty of recordings of people who play better than I ever will.
Why play chess? I will never be able to beat my computer anyway.
Why paint portraits? I will never be as good as Rembrandt, and my camera is infinitely better anyway.
I think the point of the activity is not "I will take the best picture of this plane/the moon that anyone has ever taken". Rather, it's "I will take the best picture that I ever took".
Setting up a camera capable of taking quality pics of celestial bodies sounds like a fun hobby, see: https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/166334-debayering-a-dslrs...
[0] https://twitter.com/mxeon1001/status/1108738701956472833
[image] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D2MH4hwWwAEjhsv?format=jpg&name=...
With a date and time you can easily cross reference press schedules (released by the White House) or flight plan data (archived by FlightRadar24 among others) or Twitter posts or other published photographs or....etc. AF1 isn't exactly a stealth fighter; its location at least domestically is rather well tracked.