Tag Archives: federal aviation administration

Easy to Guess Who You Work For

At was at BFI awaiting the arrival of something and I was checking FlightRadar24 to see what was coming in.  I saw a Learjet 60 on the screen south of SeaTac and tapped on it.  As soon as I saw the flight path, it was clear who the jet belonged to.  The shot below was what I saw and the repeated patterns around SeaTac suggested it was an FAA aircraft undertaking calibration flights for the airport instrumentation.

I stopped thinking about it for a while until I saw a jet appear on the approach to BFI that I hadn’t been aware of.  Sure enough, it was the FAA Lear 60.  They plonked it down right on the keys and quickly exited to the FBO.  I imagine that flying repeated sequences of approaches is not the most exciting way to spend the day so they were glad of the break.

FAA Jets With Extra Bits

The engineer in me is always pleased by a plane with extra bits added.  This Learjet 60 was departing San Jose.  As it taxied out, you could see a lot of extra probes on the front fuselage and some antennae on the fin.  It is a Federal Aviation Administration jet, hence its abbreviated registration number.  I assume it is used for flight checking services when the performance of things like instrument landing systems is calibrated.  Whatever it does, it has a few added extras compared to the average bizjet.