While at work this evening, we spotted a thick contrail (what we call a "juicer!") heading eastbound on the track heading towards Washington where we often see Dulles flights.  I scrambled to the roof to catch some shots and when I got back down we tried to figure out what it was.  Flight Aware wasn't showing anything on that track, nor did a search for 744's.  On a hunch, I thought it looked like it might be one of the Japanese versions of Air Force One, and sure enough, I found an article that shows the Prime Minister was on his way to Washington for a meeting with President Obama!  Since governmental and military aircraft do not display on Flight Aware, by the process of elimination, we came to the conclusion that it must be what we saw.

Although the shots didn't come out too good, I think it's pretty obvious that this is one of the two VIP 747's used by Prime Minister Noda.  What do you guys think?

Here's an article describing the visit:

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And here's the Wikipedia entry on the two aircraft:

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Pretty cool no matter what!

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