Red Flag is a time for lots of military aircraft to do their thing.  However, it isn’t only the military that show up.  Transporting everything that is required to support lots of deploying jets might be done by military transports but it is not unusual for civilian organizations to get some work.  Whether it was Red Flag support or something else, we got to see a couple of 747-400 freighters while we were there.  Both of them came from the same company, Kalitta.

One of the jets was fully painted up and showed up on the approach one day.  It flew a straight in approach and landed to either deposit or pick up some bulky items.  The second jet was a bit different.  First, it was in plane white with just some Kalitta markings.  More importantly, it arrived during a Red a Flag mission.  It ended up holding overhead for a long time while the launch was underway.  Finally they brought them down for an approach.  However, it wasn’t clear which way they would come.  Nellis has a habit of bringing jets in from different ends almost at whim.

At first it looked like they would land on the 21s.  Then they looked like they would go to the other end.  We jumped in the car and headed that way.  Just as we were getting close, the jet turned away and headed east.  We did a quick about turn and followed suit.  We hadn’t gone too far when they reversed course.  Where they deliberately toying with us?  Another quick reversal and we were getting close but now they were turning on to final.  Time ran out and we pulled in to a parking lot by a tire dealership just as it came in to view.  We had to work for that one.