[Red Steel]

Greta was REALLY steamed about this! Aside from scaring people to death, she was pushing the DC reporter to ask Obama how much this little stunt cost the taxpayers. I loved her comment that for $300 they could have bought Photoshop and faked up a pic of AF1 over the NY Skyline and avoided all this cost and hassle.

I haven't seen it pointed out yet on any of these AF1 threads that all active AF pilots fly x-amount of hours a month to keep their proficiency up and that includes the Air Force 1 pilots. The money for this flight was already in the defense budget so there was no extra expenses involved.

The problem is a political one. Obama's shortsightedness to see that a low flying 747 with trailing F-16s over NYC would invoke memories and terrorist concerns.

[GovernmentShrinker]

Agreed that there was probably no extra expense for the planned flights. The extra expense on the ground in NYC and nearby NJ was substantial, however — lots of extra police time, lots of ambulance runs and hospital personnel to treat people injured, feeling faint, having chest pains, having PTSD flashbacks, etc. And the New York Mercantile Exchange was evacuated during trading hours, at an impossible to calculate cost.

[cookcounty]

" The money for this flight was already in the defense budget so there was no extra expenses involved."

Spoken like a true government worker!

[steve-b]

The problem is a political one.

The problem is a stupidity one -- how many people were involved in setting this up, and it didn't occur to any of them to make sure it was announced in advance?