Military Plane, Helicopters Circle Manhattan: Nothing to See Here, Government Says

UPDATE, Tuesday, 8:20 p.m.: While the Air National Guard keeps insisting Tuesday's Midtown flyover was a "routine training flight," CBS news radio reporter Alex Silverman says he has a government source telling him the military aircrafts were "involved in a Secret Service protective operation... coordinated with the FAA."

Representatives for both the U.S. Secret Service and the FAA did not answer Patch's requests for comment on this development Tuesday night.

One odd aspect of the case, though: NYC Emergency Management, the agency that sends out alerts to New Yorkers whenever there's a potentially alarming event (such as a military flyover) on the horizon, "did not have any information about this flyover before it happened," according to spokeswoman Nancy Silvestri.

"We have a standard routine" with the FAA, the city spokeswoman said, and "it's rare that it's not followed. So I'm not really sure what was the problem."

(In case you've been living under a rock: U.S. President-elect Donald Trump currently resides inside an ornate, gold-plated penthouse at the top of Trump Tower, located along 5th Avenue between East 56th and East 57th streets in Midtown. The FAA established a no-fly zone in the 3,000 feet above the tower back in November, as soon as Trump was elected — although that hasn't done much to ease pedestrian and vehicular chaos at street level.)

Reached again Tuesday night by phone (previous convo below), Eric Durr, a spokesman for the Air National Guard, said: "All I can tell you is the aircraft belonged to the 106th Rescue Wing, and it was a training mission." He said the plane's pilot, the now-famous Col. Broccoli — "a good guy and a pretty experienced aviator" — informed his superiors, as per protocol, that he wanted to schedule a training mission over Manhattan on Tuesday, to which his superiors answered, "OK, it's scheduled."

Durr said he had "no clue" how the Secret Service would have gone about combining its own operation with Broccoli's training flight. "I don't even know how that happens," he said.

Prominent aviation blogger Jason Rabinowitz counts himself among Col. Broccoli's skeptics. From his Twitter timeline:

Stay tuned for additional updates as they come in. Our original story, posted around 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, is below.

MANHATTAN, NY — A military plane and a couple Black Hawk helicopters spotted weaving through the skies over Manhattan early Tuesday evening, sending city dwellers into something of a tither, were in fact "authorized flights over New York City in coordination with FAA air traffic control," according to an FAA spokeswoman.

Col. Nicholas Broccoli — yes, Broccoli — told a Washington Post reporter that the extended flyover was part of "standard military training."

Eric Durr, a spokesman for the Air National Guard, identified the aircrafts as an HC-130 Hercules plane, used for search and rescue, and two HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters, "a version of the Black Hawk also used for search and rescue." They were launched Tuesday from the 106th Rescue Wing of the Francis S. Gabreski Air National Guard Base on Long Island, he said.

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"It was a routine training flight," Durr said. "We do this all the time."

The military aircrafts were first spotted around 4 p.m. Tuesday. Footage from freaked-out witnesses flooded social media for the next half hour or so.

Contacted by a flurry of reporters, NYPD spokespeople originally said they had no idea why a warplane was circling Manhattan on a Tuesday afternoon.

Finally, at 4:37 p.m., Col. Broccoli spoke — and the city breathed a collective sigh of relief. Sort of.

Lead image via Chris Gettings/Twitter