Air Force One Flyover Photos
On July 31, the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense released hundreds of pages of documents related to the much-criticized photo-op flyover of Air Force One. The April 27 flight over the New York Harbor and lower Manhattan led the director of the White House Military Office to resign.
Among the newly disclosed documents are 146 low-resolution photographs. We’ve enlarged a few of them and published them here. For good measure, we also included an e-mail exchange that took place amid the immediate fallout from the operation, in which Air Force General Arthur Lichte jokingly wrote: “I recommend we just photo shop it in the next time. This became way too hard :)”
All photos by the U.S. Air Force.
Also, a sharper photo was released May 8 by the White House Press Office:
August 3rd, 2009 at 1:14 pm EEDT
Looks like they picked a truly awful day — way too much haze.
And the “money shot” over the Statue of Liberty has a reflection off of the canopy (above the nose of the 747). Not very professional!
-Greg Peterson
August 4th, 2009 at 12:20 am EEDT
I’ve made better photos with a point and shoot out the window of a 767.
Amazing, our tax dollars at work.
August 4th, 2009 at 12:13 pm EEDT
I recommend they at least consult a professional photographer next time, really, they should hire one. The fallout would have been a lot easier to handle if they had come out of the project with some spectacular images instead of this crap. Even the money shot looks like a mediocre amateur snapshot at best.
Dear Obama, I would be happy to help out next time, my rate is a lot less than $350,000.00/day
August 5th, 2009 at 4:42 pm EEDT
These look as good as the economy! The results of electing a crack team and why we paid the big bucks!
I’d do it for .000000015 % of 12 trillion ( FY 2009 est.) plus usage of course.
August 6th, 2009 at 5:26 am EEDT
These photos are look fantastic. Thanks for your blog.
September 30th, 2009 at 2:50 pm EEDT
A waste of fuel for government PR. Save the fuel and get out of my wallet.