Page 4 of Air Force One (Miranda Chase #16)

For thirty-five years and thousands of flights, there was no reported instance of either aircraft not being mission-ready.

They received immediate clearance and exclusive use of the airspace within ten kilometers, briefly altering flight paths for Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and grounding all aircraft at several smaller fields.

After performing the few steps required by the Pre-takeoff Checklist, pilots Colonel Sandra Ames and General John Owen advanced the throttles on all four engines.

With such a favorable thrust-to-weight ratio, Air Force One climbed quickly as it flew slightly south of east. In just fifteen minutes, it reached a cruising altitude of forty-five thousand feet and cleared the coast. Within thirty, it passed two hundred kilometers offshore.

The order of travel was unfortunate.

The original plan, for what the media had dubbed the President’s Final Farewell Tour, had included stops at London, Brussels, and Paris before proceeding to Senegal to speak at the African Union meeting.

All fifty-five African leaders would be in attendance, making it an excellent opportunity for President Cole to investigate the best leverage opportunities with the various leaders.

Major General Ralph Eubanks, the recently promoted director of the White House Military Office responsible for all Presidential travel, had feared that placing the African Union as the ultimate stop on the final tour of a very popular American President might insult the European nations.

He therefore shifted the trip’s timing enough to reverse the order of the visits.

Under the original plan, Air Force One would have flown along the US and Canadian east coast for the first twenty-two hundred kilometers.

Under the revised schedule, the plane flew directly east, striking for the distant African coast with the first land being the Canary Islands, which lay five thousand, five hundred and twenty-three kilometers from Washington, DC.