Mystery airplane

[Michael Blakely]

For the past six months, I've noticed the same airplane flies over my house every night between 8:30 and 8:45pm. It's flying low and slow with wing lights on. I've been trying to identify this mystery airplane ever since the third time I saw it and realized how regular it was.

Most jets that fly low, and south to north, over my house are business jets going to land at McClellan Palomar airport. I combed the flight aware stats for days trying to find the plane, but no luck.

Several times I sat outside with my binoculars at the ready, but then got distracted and did not catch it until it was passed and I was looking at it from behind.

Finally, this week, I took my binoculars with my while I walked the dog, and I caught the mystery airplane. It was too dark to see the livery, but it definitely had wing mounted engines.

Hmm. A clue. Definately NOT a biz-jet. I've never seen a plane with wing mounted engines land at Palomar, except the new Cal Pacific Airlines plane, but they're not operational yet, so it couldn't be them going over EVERY night.

I expanded my search. I decided to check flightaware for flight going short distances from San Diego, Brown Field, and Miramar. After just a few minutes, I FOUND IT!!

It's a nightly 8:30pm FedEx A300 flight from San Diego to Ontario (California, not Canada). The flight is only 95 miles, so they stay at 10,000 feet and just over 300 knots. Hence the unusual "low and slow" over my house.

Now I can sleep at night.

[Todd Meek]

Wow, only a 95 mile flight? That almost doesn't even seem worth it to fly that short of distance. I would think that using a big rig would be more economical than flying 95 miles but maybe I'm wrong. At least you figured out what plane it was. That would drive me nuts as well until I figured it out.

[Michael Blakely]

According to flight aware, they then go on to KSFO. My guess is they fly KSAN-KONT with a partial load and top it off at KONT.

[Norberto Rivera]

Pretty cool!!! That would have driven me nuts too... or maybe I'm already there...

[Rey Ramon]

Yeah same..would of driven me nuts. Sometimes I think I'm the only nut out there who notices things like this. Nice to know I'm not a lone.

[Todd Meek]

According to flight aware, they then go on to KSFO. My guess is they fly KSAN-KONT with a partial load and top it off at KONT.

Ok, that makes more sense then. I could see partial load to KONT, then top off and fly to KSFO.