Some of the speculation about the “Venus 1 Heavy” call sign appears to be cleared up at this site:
But the red tail on the F16 is still an open issue.
Some of the speculation about the "Venus 1 Heavy" call sign appears to be cleared up at this site:From that website:http://taylor.typepad.com/blog/2009/04/a-380000-pound-4engine-airliner-will-be-zipping-around-the-statue-of-liberty-at-1500-feet-but-you-ha.html
One note about callsigns. I think it's safe to say that this definitely wasn't some kind of super-secret passenger-carrying flight, where the truth is being obscured so as to prevent a politician from being embarassed.The 'mystery' on this aspect can be easily 'put to bed' now.When the VC-25 is carrying the President, its callsign—as we all know—is Air Force One. When they are carrying VIPs (Cabinet officers, senators and the like) their callsigns are SAM [for Special Air Mission] 28000 and SAM 29000, depending on the tail code of the aircraft being flown.
When they are carrying relatives of VIPs, the callsign will be Executive [tail code]. And finally, when they are just doing the day-to-day proficiency and currency flights, the front-office callsign will be Venus 1 (for aircraft 28000) and Venus 2 (for aircraft 29000).
Venus, incidentally, is the "house" callsign for 89th Airlift Wing.
Plenty of other aircraft types also use that callsign: the C-20s use Venus 2x, the C-37As use Venus 4x, the (now retired) C-9A used Venus 8x, and the C-32As use Venus 9x.
Finally, because the VC-25's gross take-off weight is over 255,000 lbs, they will have the "Heavy" suffix appended to the callsigns. And because the front office that day was using "Venus 1" (as opposed to "SAM 28000"), we can assume there were no VIPs or relatives of VIPs aboard.