This Boeing 747-E4B that is operated by the US Air Force was the highest tracked plane on Flightradar24 today. The reason why is because this is the so-called ‘Doomsday Plane’ – rumoured to take off in times of war or potential danger, and keep safe various national security secrets and protocols while remaining in the air.

Right away, I would point out that it makes no sense for a plane on such a mission to be easily followed on a public flight tracking app. I mean, if I can see it – then so too could every enemy of the United States.

All that aside, perhaps we should look at what the aircraft actually did today – where it began its journey and where it ended up.

At around 5pm local time, the plane took off from Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, Louisiana. You can determine this from the first screenshot – with Shreveport clearly named and the abbreviation of ‘BAD’ for Barksdale.

The flight then travelled east and performed two square-shaped laps of a large area covering parts of North Carolina and southern Virginia, before continuing its journey north toward Chesapeake Bay.

The plane dropped altitude in readiness to land, as seen by the colour change in the flight path. In the above screenshot, it is positioned over Baltimore and appears to turn west to perhaps then fly south – possibly on its way to Washington DC.

As soon as the plane landed, the destination then popped up on the screen – being Andrews Air Force Base (ADW) in Maryland, not far from Washington.

The ‘Doomsday Plane’ was airborne for four hours today – but what do we make of this? Was it ordered into the air and told to stay there until it was given permission to land? Does this explain the laps over Virginia and North Carolina – waiting for the threat to pass – or was it some type of exercise? Or is it a decoy plane for Air Force One?

In any case, for those interested in this kind of thing – it is easy to download Flightradar24 or any other flight tracking app, and then search for ‘ORDER01’ to see if it is on assignment. Personally, I think that if this really was a ‘Doomsday Plane’ then none of us would be allowed to know its location at any given time – so I lean toward this flight being some kind of routine mission or exercise.

But I could be wrong…