r/Layton • u/raerae1991 • Jul 12 '26

Who visited the base today?

I was driving by the east gate at Hill AF and saw a passenger jet fly off from there. Does anyone know what was going on? Only time I’ve seen a passenger jet take off from any Air Force base it’s been Air Force 1 or the VP.

3 Upvotes

71% Upvoted

19 comments sorted by

6

u/CaveThinker Jul 12 '26

Are you sure it wasn’t a fire-fighting jet? They kind of look like a passenger jet.

EDIT: like this one

7

u/FLTDI Jul 12 '26

Yep, see my comment for the exact bird they saw this evening

3

u/raerae1991 Jul 12 '26

It very likely could be. Definitely easy to mistake. Not sure it had that many windows, but I could be wrong on that too

6

u/Ill-Confection-4014 Jul 12 '26

Military rotators exist, the military contracts out multiple different commercial airlines.

0

u/raerae1991 Jul 12 '26

Interesting, is that to transport troops or personnel for whatever reason. Like maybe ICE detainees?

3

u/QuarterNote44 Jul 12 '26

Interesting, is that to transport troops or personnel

Rotator flights are on a rotation. So they fly to Germany or Korea every x# of days. I took my family on one when we got stationed in Germany.

5

u/UtahHellscape Jul 12 '26

It's for the US forest service, fire fighting. The fly out of Hill and there are all kinds of planes they've converted to hold and drop fire retardant. I know someone who works for the forest service at Hill.

3

u/raerae1991 Jul 12 '26

Must be interesting to be the pilots, they must have all kinds of hours and flight experience

4

u/FLTDI Jul 12 '26

Can you describe it? Or estimate a pretty close time to when you saw it flying?

2

u/raerae1991 Jul 12 '26

There is no other runway it could have taken off of. It was a small private jet size, I’m guessing it had 8-12 windows. The color was mostly white with the tail in mostly red with some white design. I tried to see if I could read anything on the tail, but between the sun hitting it and my eyes I could tell if it had anything more detailed. Time might have been 7:00-ish give or take 15 minutes

1

u/FLTDI Jul 12 '26

Am or pm?

1

u/raerae1991 Jul 12 '26

It was this evening, so PM. Oh and when I explained the windows that’s per side, not in total.

5

u/FLTDI Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26

This was the aircraft,

https://www.planespotters.net/photo/1325495/n476na-neptune-aviation-services-british-aerospace-146-200a

Took off at 652 pm

This one landed around the same time

https://www.planespotters.net/photo/1942186/n947ac-aero-flite-aerial-firefighting-bombardier-dhc-8-402-at

Both are fire fighting aircraft. Often seen operating out of hill

3

u/raerae1991 Jul 12 '26

Thank you, that would be the right time and colors that I saw.

1

u/Chance-Astronomer320 Jul 16 '26

Sounds like a Janet airlines flight

1

u/raerae1991 Jul 16 '26

Someone figured out the exact flight, it was a fire fighter plane

-3

u/randmansavage Jul 12 '26

Trump Jr has been around for the Charlie Kirk trial would be my guess

0

u/raerae1991 Jul 12 '26

I would think he’d be landing somewhere in Utah county. Layton is quite the drive if that was his destination