As promised, WhiteKnightTwo did make an appearance in the skies over Las Cruces on Saturday morning. The aircraft took off from Phoenix and, at around 9:30 am MDT (11:30 am EDT) made a series of three low passes over the airport. WK2 made a pair of passes over the 8/26 runway and then, after taking about 10 minutes to fly over the city itself, returned to make a nearly touch-and-go approach on runway 30, coming within a few feet of the runway before ascending, circling the airport once more at altitude, and departing.
The flybys were witnessed by a small crowd at the airport (on the order of a few dozen people), including a handful of media (myself included) who were able to get runway-side seats for the flybys. Everyone, even the Virgin staff at the airport, seemed impressed to the point of awestruck about the plane’s appearance. After the flybys WK2 then flew back to Mojave without incident.
The picture above is a tiny sample of much larger number of photos I took this morning; I hope to post more later this weekend after I return home.
Leave a Reply