I vote for check clearance. Many banks still take physical posession of all checks written on their accounts. Seems like thay always use beater BE-58's and C206's at 3AM to shuttle their checks aorund the country

Do banks still fly checks around for processing? Many of these flights have/had been done by props in the wee hours. North Car. is home to several nationwide banks, so if checks are still flown around, that's got my vote, too.

I'm glad I saw this thread. I have the same problem concerning a certainly very small prop plane that takes off at about 1:30 AM from DCA just about every "morning". The unfortunate thing is that this plane is so slow it takes about 5 minutes to be out of hearing. I have watched its lights a few times and wonder "how can that plane go so slow". I thought it might be the plane of an airport employee. I guess I will never find out.

try looking the flights up on flightaware.com - you can search by airport and see all the departures there.

When in doubt, do what I do. Call the tower at the airport. It's probably listed.

dh

Is it possible to discern from the sound if this is a turbo-prop or a piston powered aircraft?

the chapel hill airport is a very small airport belongs to UNC, I don't think it has any commercial flights and it's unattended in nights (no lights on).

but if the plane is to/from RDU, it should be not very low when it passes chapel hill.

i had no idea checks were ferried around by plane -- that makes sense, though, although i'm sure that's not going to be lasting much longer, with everything going electronic.

Freeway traffic watch? CIA or Blackwater?

Airports don't have to be attended for there to be runway lighting. Most uncontrolled airports have pilot controlled lighting that can be activated using the airplane's communications radio. Chapel Hill is such an airport.

http://www.airnav.com/airport/KIGX

There are very few airports that don't have at least one runway with available nighttime lighting.

There are tons of prop planes that fly things around at night. They might subcontract with companies like Fedex or just be independent couriers. It's how many private pilots first get their commercials hours. It's generally a tough gig (especially depending on the weather you fly in) and they fly mostly overnight with many stops.

I hope they are not still spending people and plane resources transporting cancelled checks.

This act of 5 years ago was supposed to eliminate the silly need to ferry checks back and forth, when all you need is the few standard bits of information on them.

"Banking industry insiders say such worries are much ado about nothing. Changeover to the digital system will come very gradually, they say. Most banks will operate both paper and image systems for years to come, according to Bank of America's Betty Riess."

from the following MSNBC article:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5880440/

BTW, Labcorp (SKQ) also seems to be running an overnight network using older aircraft. I am not sure what they are transporting..medical samples maybe? It could also be that their transportation network is not related to their core business.

On the west coast of Canada the newspapers would get flown over to the islands about that time.
I used to fly over and watch the hockey games and would bump into them loading the planes.

Original poster here again. Someone mentioned the Chapel Hill Airport. I live < 1 mile from the airport and can hear planes (on occasion) taking off/landing at that airport. It doesn't get much traffic. It has medical flights fairly routinely. Then, on "game" days, there are assorted little jets coming and going.

My mystery plane is not using the Chapel Hill Airport...I know the sound of those planes. It's someplace above, I can hear it coming from the distance, then almost immediately above my house, and then I hear it going into the distance.

I'm glad that there are all these thoughts out there about what the plane is doing. At least now I can pick the favorite story and believe that's what the plane is doing. I think I'll choose Blackwater.