What is this plane doing?
 

The TravelBuzz board seems to be the most appropriate spot for my crazy question.

I live in a somewhat rural area of North Carolina. Every night a what sounds-to-be relatively small prop plane flies over my house at almost exactly 3 a.m. It's fairly low because I guess the engine noise wakes me. It might be in the range of a few minutes before 3 until a few minutes after, but it's just as regular as can be. I glance at the clock and sure enough, it's the 3 a.m. plane! I also think it's "trained" my body to wake at this time, because I'll often wake by myself about 5-10 minutes before 3 a.m., and find that's a good time to get up and use the restroom. Without fail, the plane is overhead in no time.

What is the plane doing? I understand commerical travel and am in tune with all the early morning take-offs at RDU, which start about 6 a.m. Who is flying at 3 a.m. with such regularity? Why do people fly in the middle of the night? Is someone commuting to someplace every day? Are they delivering something? Is it less expensive to take flying lessons at night?

Hope someone can settle my curiousity!

It may be airmail...

could be a plane being ferried in. DCA has a lot of arrivals between 2300 and 0100. i presume they are lining up for 0600 and 0700 flights.

That was my thought... FedEx.... or something like that.

I'm absolutely positive it's not a jet. I hear the jets out of RDU and even smaller jets landing at our local airport (Chapel Hill NC) and I know what they sound like. This is clearly a prop plane. And, it's flying pretty low.

Keep the ideas coming....this has been going on for about a year.

Does fedex fly props? :confused:

You mention that it is flying low . . . If possible the most useful thing to do would be if you can spot the registration number on the plane. I do understand that this may involve standing out in your yard at 0245 with a pair of binoculars, but given the registration number, the ownership and flight info can be discovered

I can't spot anything on plane because it's around 3 a.m. in morning! And, I live in the woods!

Please keep thinking and giving ideas.

There are tons of reason why there might be a 3 am departure.
First off....do you live near an airport?
It could be an aerial survey, could be a freighter, could be training.

What do you define low as. The general public has huge problems determing the real altitude of aircraft.

FedEx doesn't directly fly prop aircraft but they do employee sub-contractors that do.

As far as seeing the N number at night.....good luck. Its not like that number is lit up.

Fokker 50's. I have followed them in at night in more than one airport.

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/SKQ301

http://discussions.flightaware.com/v...9d68c419df8ea5

The Fedex Air Fleet includes a dozen active ATRs (42s and 72s).

Returning from MBJ a couple weeks ago we saw two FedEx painted prop planes on the tarmac...but haven't seen any domesticly.

How do you think that FedEx, DHL, UPS, etc. can pick up a package at 5pm and deliver it across the country at 10am the next morning? Those packages, and the trucks and airplanes which carry them, stay busy all night long.

The prop airplanes are "feeders" which carry the packages between the smaller cities and the somewhat larger cities which have jet service.

We've got a few Cessna 208's flying around the Pacific NW operated by Empire Airlines contracted out by Fed Ex Express, and they are indeed painted in Fed Ex livery...

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.

Just a guess here, but you said you live in a rural area- farmers?

Drug running?

I don't know! FedEx is probably best guess. :confused:

DHL has a terminal at March ARB, and I often wake up at 3am to the sound of their plane. (I'm sure they have more than 1, but that'a the one that wakes me up! LOL)




"Where am I going, and why am I in this handbasket?"

There used to be lots of small planes that flew checks to be processed every night, not so much the case any more. Another option could be medical samples being sent to labs. There are countless possibilities.

Slightly O/T but...

Living outside ANC in a town called Eagle River, I am used to having jets fly overhead all hours of the night, first with the redeyes taking off, and the FedEx/UPS operations that commence from the airport. The jets are fairly high, but still rattle the walls and windows occasionally, and can get annoying when one is trying to sleep...

Then again, I'm sure people around IND/LAX/ATL experience the same. I am not "in the city" per se, but its still annoying. Smaller planes are like mosquitoes, you just ignore them. Blackhawks are interesting... but only emerge during the day on runs from military installations in the area, but do fly quite low... Also are fun are the F-15's and other Air Force jet aircraft, but these are less common...

As of 2-3 yrs ago. It was still more expensive to electronically process checks via Check 21 than it was to still fly the checks to the processing centers.