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“Get Off The iPad!”: Pilots Scolded During ‘Close Encounter’ with Air Force One
A sharp-eyed Air Traffic Controller may have just averted another national catastrophe in the making.
Shortly after departing DC, the President’s plane headed northeast over New York last night.
President Trump, Melania, and a full entourage were heading across the pond for an official state visit to Great Britain.
There were reportedly no planes within at least 8 miles Air Force One as they soared along at 32,000 feet; normal cruising altitude.
Not surprisingly, 8 miles is a little too close for comfort when it comes to keeping planes away from Air Force One.
But the momentary 8-mile gap wasn’t the problem. The Spirit Airlines plane flying 8 miles out wasn’t just too close for comfort.
It was flying at an identical altitude on a trajectory that would potentially cross paths with the President’s plane, putting them on a possible collision course.
Apparently, the pilot of the Spirit Airlines plane wasn’t in a talkative mood, because the Air Traffic Controller had to repeatedly warn the pilot to make course corrections before getting a response back.
Have a listen to the audio captured between the Air Traffic Controller and the Spirit Airlines pilot.
You can hear the Controller getting more and more frustrated with the pilot’s lack of response:
AIR FORCE ONE and Spirit Airlines flt NK1300 got too close over Long Island, New York for Air Traffic Control and get’s yelled at including getting told “GET OFF THE IPAD”!
Tip via @xJonNYC Audio via @liveatc & Tracking via @ADSBex pic.twitter.com/sLJ0rip8sG
— Thenewarea51 (@thenewarea51) September 17, 2025
The obvious thing that stands out is the professionalism of the Air Force One pilot responding to the Air Traffic Controller.
Particularly compared to the lackadaisical — almost non-existent response — of the Spirit Airlines pilot.
Just the fact that the pilot needed to be told to “PAY ATTENTION” is frightening.
Though the planes were positioned 8 miles apart during the incident, the flight paths would have potentially converged within a few miles as reported by The Daily Mail:
Air Force One was involved in mid-air drama with a passenger jet as it ferried US President Donald Trump to Britain on Tuesday, according to reports.
An air traffic controller was forced to intervene when he noticed the path of a Spirit Airlines jet converging with the president’s plane over Long Island, CBS and Bloomberg reported today.
Spirit Flight 1300 was travelling from Fort Lauderdale to Boston when the quick-thinking ATC reportedly noticed their altitudes were similar and paths aligned over New York.
Preliminary data from Flight Radar suggests the closest the two jets came on converging paths was around 11 miles.
Donald Trump safely touched down in London late on Tuesday for an historic second state visit.
A spokesperson for the airline told the Daily Mail today: ‘Spirit Airlines flight 1300 (FLL-BOS) followed procedures and Air Traffic Control (ATC) instructions while en route to Boston (BOS) and landed uneventfully at BOS.
‘Safety is always our top priority.’
That report makes it sound as if the planes were never close enough to actually warrant any danger.
I have seen multiple reports from the mainstream media that have painted this incident as stemming from an abundance of caution by the Controller — maybe even an unwarranted amount of caution.
This CBS news report, for example, amplified the fact that the planes did not collide, and both made it to their destinations safely:
But as I dug deeper into this story, I kept seeing two different distances mentioned.
Was it 8 miles, or 11 miles?
And is that far enough apart in either case?
But that’s when I first realized that although the planes were a full 8 miles apart at the time of this interaction…
Their paths would have indeed crossed, if something hadn’t changed.
Just imagining that possible scenario is almost too dark to think about right now.
Check out more details of the flight paths from this report by The Hill:
Air traffic control (ATC) operators admonished a Spirit Airlines pilot Tuesday for flying too close to Air Force One, President Trump’s official plane.
The communication with ATC occurred while the two planes were flying over Long Island, N.Y.
According to flight tracking site Flightradar24, the two planes were flying parallel to each other 8 miles apart, and were on paths on which they could have converged 11 miles apart, as reported by CBS News.
President Trump, along with first lady Melania Trump, were flying from Joint Base Andrews in Prince George’s County, Maryland, to London. They arrived in the UK on Tuesday evening. The president is meeting with King Charles III and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Wednesday. (Emphasis added.)
According to that report from The Hill reporting the information taken from the flight tracker data, their paths would have potentially crossed — as I stated.
But even then, the point at which their paths would have crossed would have put each plane in that same location 11 miles apart.
Meaning that one plane would have crossed the path of the other… and the second plane would have crossed the same point in the air afterwards, with the first plane now 11 miles past that point.
So there really was no danger — right?
I have flown enough to know that things change often at 23,000 feet and at speeds that are hard to imagine.
We’re so used to gauging ground speed that our brains have a hard time truly grasping how fast a plane is flying.
Particularly along the coast, there are all sorts of reasons why a plane might need to slow down, speed up, divert from a course… and then later come back in line with that same course.
Any of which could have altered that 11-mile distance very easily.
Remember — both of these planes were flying at approximately 500 knots; in excess of 500 miles per hour.
A lot can change fast at those speeds.
It’s easy to say there was no danger now, with both planes having landed and the news cycle having moved on — as it does so fast and furiously.
After all, here’s an awesome view capturing the moment when Air Force One landed in Great Britain early this morning:
But I have to ask the question:
What would have been the result had that Air Traffic Controller considered the improbability of those paths aligning perfectly, and dismissed the danger altogether?
Is that really a risk worth taking?
Or… is the fact that the President of the United States was flying onboard a plane that had the potential of crossing paths with another plane just a few miles down the road enough to ruffle some feathers?
Personally, I would prefer the other pilots “Get off the iPad!” and pay more attention; just as they were told to do midair!
What about you — did that Air Traffic Controller go overboard, or did he show the right amount of zeal for the moment?
What do you think?