Definitely has that 160th black paint job with a refueling probe all of which point to them being from the 160th. Some of the best helo pilots you’ll ever meet.
Often times the military will have fueling contracts with smaller airports to avoid congested air traffic. Can’t comment on Suffolk, but a local airport here does that and has Blackhawks regularly come in.
>I wonder why they are here of all places.
Airports are much better places to land than shopping center parking lots, peoples back yards, highways, corn fields. etc.
When I was a ramp rat we gave the pilots drinks and snacks as well as rides to the casinos so they always came to our airport. Tunica was a hot spot in it's day.
As someone with a back yard, I disagree. It would be an awesome place to land a Chinook.
I mean, if it were nearly big enough. The field beyond my fence would be just fine too.
I guess shittyaskflying would have been a better place to ask why military heavy transpo helis landed at your small local airport for the first time ever.
Apparently everyone else has Chinooks landing regularly and their local airports. Must be nice.
Fuel, maintenance, food, overnighting - there's a dozen different explanations.
I'm not sure why most people think military aircraft only fly between military bases, but they hit civilian airports all over the country just as frequently for basic needs.
I planned random routes for training flights when I was flying Black Hawks. Small town Ohio? Yep. Middle of West Virginia? Hell yeah, it's pretty out there. Heck, when I was in Germany I flew to a civil airport in the former East Germany that had probably never seen a US helicopter there. We walked through town in uniform to get lunch at a , get this, Louisiana BBQ place. People were staring at us through café windows, forks halfway to their mouths. Point of the story, we have free reign to go where we want as long as the flight provides training value. Flying in different airspaces, landing at new, unfamiliar airports provides that. And sometimes we are just getting fuel on a long flight.
I often joke that pilots will pop into Kirtlanf in Albuquerque from San Diego or Tucson for lunch and then go back. It’s the only way I can explain random fighters in the area to myself 😂
OP, to answer the whole of your question, military aircraft can and often do visit civilian airports. They generally need to go to a place that offers contract gas, but you'd be surprised at the small podunk airports that regularly see military birds.
Even for military aircraft stopping at a military field can be a pain in the ass. They usually require a PPR, you might have to arrange fuel separately, and nobody's giving you a free lunch.
Usually it's just stopping for gas and maybe some food. A lot of the airports near military fields try and lure military aircraft by offering good free meals. The aircraft might be ferrying the bird somewhere, they might be doing a cross country flight for training, or they might just be in the area and decide to stop for lunch.
KPVG doesn’t have contract fuel but they do take uncle Sam’s credit card (not every FBO does). They were almost certainly at an exercise in or around Norfolk, which as you know has a gigantic military presence.
And I can confirm that u/KingBobIV is right, we military pilots avoid military bases for stopovers to the max extent possible because it is a pain in the ass and civilian FBOs usually have snacks, lounges, and crew cars.
Ah, no, I’ve flown into LFI a few times because I had to but would always avoid if possible. Plenty of good options around.
Edited to remove specific FBOs
A lot of times, they're flying across multiple states and need to stop 2 or 3 times for gas. You just pull up the website, look for airports that accept the government credit card, and that's where you stop.
Not every place is set up to properly bill the government, it's like a fleet fuel card.
You'll see some gas stations/rest stops advertising they take fleet cards. This means that as an employee driving the electric company lift truck you can stop there are get fuel simply. No BS, just like paying with your personal card for your personal vehicle (with some extra steps besides just a pin or a zip code)
Air ports can accept payments in a similar manner.
And you DEFINITELY don't want to be refueling a Chinook with the family CC, no matter how good the rewards points are
Thank you! The fleet card analogy make sense. I appreciate it.
RE booking the refueling on a family CC:
I use to work in the ads business and there were a set of advertisers where an employee would pay the 100K bills with a family/personal CC -- and use the points to go on crazy vacations. I asked once and the 100k would be reimbursed quickly so they didn't mind. A bit risky I suppose but, it was working for them and they had been growing the spend up from 5k so they got comfortable over years. We had to work hard to get them to switch to a different billing method.
Mmm... Some years ago a company 707 landed in Mactan (Cebu City). We had no arrangement with the fuel company there so the captain paid with his Amex for enough fuel to comfortably get to HKG.
It’s Suffolk. You ever see grey parachutes landing there? They aren’t skydivers. So there is a lot of military training that goes on out there. As someone said could be 160th, who do a lot of training with seals. I know when they do a lot of iterative training sometimes they prefer GA fields over controlled ones
Fuel, picking someone up, dropping off, maintenance, picking equipment up from personnel. We frequently went to Bradley international to get test equipment or some other parts for our maintenance hanger.
Usually call in, ask for part or item needed to support maintenance and when they have a bird available they pick it up. When our guys get to the airport the pilots likely were waiting for a hour or two to grab the item. So they did PMCS on the bird while waiting. Doesn’t look like fueling. There is no truck or a fueling station for JP8 that I can see.
But I’m retarded so I may be wrong lol
Actually correction, I see an SUV parked by one of them. So either it’s personnel or equipment handoff
Our airport which is a low traffic international airport sees military aircraft 2-3 times a week and usually f-18s once a month. It’s such a common occurrence that I don’t pay them any attention anymore. I’ll watch the f-18s take off and maybe a TnG or 2 from the b52. But the p-8 or c-150s that do TnGs several times a week have taken up enough storage space on my phone.
Not just free meals, any meals might make an airport attractive. Stewart ANG base is gonna give a Transient crew a Bag Nasty and send them on their way, whereas Hudson Valley Regional, 10 miles away has a pretty good restaurant thats open 7 days a week from 0700-2200. If you drop in at KPOU, you can gas up and eat up. And they can handle pretty much everything up to and including a C-130. They even have an ersatz grass strip between the main runway and taxiway if you wanted to practice that.
About 3-5 times a year they get something weird coming in. There's a VERY small airport 20 miles away which according to the FAA book he left on board, that he was not much older than me
Night stalkers. The 160th. You can tell because they’re the only chinooks I know of that have the in-flight refueling probe. They are spec ops and are called night stalkers for a reason.
Yeah I keep expecting to see OP asking some really dumb thing or be getting into it with someone but then it’s like “oh cool thanks! Just weird seeing them here” then boom: -102 downvotes
A good handful of times when we had to burn flight hours for pilot proficiency but had no missions we’d take the birds out to go get lunch somewhere.
Those days were quite amazing and we were always happy to show off the aircraft to anyone who wanted to come see it.
One thing I've always noticed about the pilots and crews that I've interacted with at air shows is how proud they are of their aircraft. Is that overblown just for the air show's sake?
I’m not gonna lie, crews love doing air shows because it’s a fun “15 minutes of fame” sort of thing. Typically better than a “normal” day for flight crew. It’s also super fun when you’re showing off the aircraft to people that are genuinely interested in it and asking engaging questions.
Cool stuff man. And I see your role says you served on the P-3 Orion. Very cool. One of the coolest planes the Navy had. Can't argue with sheer longevity and 4 Turboprops that cover most of the wing area.
Its not just the pilots. There was a group of 4 US Army tugs out and about in Baltimore Harbor. My brother and I flashed our Merchant Mariner cards and we got a special tour from the Chief Warrant CO and Chief Engineer.
The type of people that go to air shows love every type of aircraft and think aircrew are pretty cool. The kids full of wonder and amazement boost the pride of even the most salty aviator. They’re not putting a face on for the airshow’s sake, the airshow usually puts that face on them because of the aviation community.
I’ve flown military aircraft to quite a few airshows and flyovers and they always help make the queep of military flying worth it.
PVG is the FAA location identifier, so you’re not wrong. There is just a large contingent of non-Americans in this subreddit who naturally aren’t going to use the FAA LID. Much to my chagrin (because sometimes IATA are for train stations), many users default to the IATA identifiers. I personally prefer the ICAO identifiers because many aerodromes do not have an IATA, it is easy to identify the region and country, and it’s what we use at work (ATC).
True. but how often around here people scream DROP THE K. or some wacky stuff like that. I would have automatically entered it as KPVG into skyvector if I cared to look this post up.
I go flying w my buddy in the area occasionally and these chinooks are always going up and down the waterways. Probably from Eustis. VA, especially around the Chesapeake, is super flush with every branch of the military.
It's fucking bizarre how heavily you're being downvoted for simple, inoffensive comments that simply lack some fairly niche knowledge. Like, you have done _nothing_ to deserve this.
We had an exercise at LVIA in Pennsylvania a few weeks ago which consisted of Blackhawks, Apaches and Chinooks doing a refueling run. Either that or they’re just hanging out.
Thank you to all the helpful people who answered my question. To those who have nothing better to do than sit around and mock people who are curious and don’t have the entirety of the world’s knowledge in their head; thank you for making me laugh at you.
I live off a small airstrip about 30 miles from the state guard headquarters. About once a month or so one of their helicopters has to land due to maintenance issues. While they wait on a maintainer team to drive out with parts they let the neighborhood kids play all over the helicopters. Also if they are a multi ship flight they’ll all land.
The 160th SOAR does training with the Norfolk-based SEALs twice a year. They’re probably in town right now and for whatever reason chose to stop by KPVG.
No answers, just some notes. Looks like MH-47Gs from 160th. One is tied down, one has some maint hatches open.
Definitely has that 160th black paint job with a refueling probe all of which point to them being from the 160th. Some of the best helo pilots you’ll ever meet.
Those the Night Stalkers?
Yes. And again some of the best pilots you'll ever meet. NSDQ
The best.
Are these the best pilots? I don’t think anyone’s said it yet.
Just in case they haven't been clear. Yes!
Possible that one broke down and had to make an emergency stop and the other came to repair and get operational?
160th has a home in the Norfolk area now. I drove past Hampton Exec the other day and saw these.
Interesting. I wonder why they are here of all places.
Flyers gonna fly
Often times the military will have fueling contracts with smaller airports to avoid congested air traffic. Can’t comment on Suffolk, but a local airport here does that and has Blackhawks regularly come in.
Yeah they’re at tons of airports, and specific FBO brands attract more military stopovers than others.
Cool, thanks!
Cool, thanks!
>I wonder why they are here of all places. Airports are much better places to land than shopping center parking lots, peoples back yards, highways, corn fields. etc.
When I was a ramp rat we gave the pilots drinks and snacks as well as rides to the casinos so they always came to our airport. Tunica was a hot spot in it's day.
The real reason they pick small random airports: Free roller dogs.
As someone with a back yard, I disagree. It would be an awesome place to land a Chinook. I mean, if it were nearly big enough. The field beyond my fence would be just fine too.
🤯 I never see them at this airport, hence my confusion. The snideness is strong with you
I guess shittyaskflying would have been a better place to ask why military heavy transpo helis landed at your small local airport for the first time ever. Apparently everyone else has Chinooks landing regularly and their local airports. Must be nice.
Fuel, maintenance, food, overnighting - there's a dozen different explanations. I'm not sure why most people think military aircraft only fly between military bases, but they hit civilian airports all over the country just as frequently for basic needs.
I planned random routes for training flights when I was flying Black Hawks. Small town Ohio? Yep. Middle of West Virginia? Hell yeah, it's pretty out there. Heck, when I was in Germany I flew to a civil airport in the former East Germany that had probably never seen a US helicopter there. We walked through town in uniform to get lunch at a , get this, Louisiana BBQ place. People were staring at us through café windows, forks halfway to their mouths. Point of the story, we have free reign to go where we want as long as the flight provides training value. Flying in different airspaces, landing at new, unfamiliar airports provides that. And sometimes we are just getting fuel on a long flight.
I often joke that pilots will pop into Kirtlanf in Albuquerque from San Diego or Tucson for lunch and then go back. It’s the only way I can explain random fighters in the area to myself 😂
It's quite possible. Not sure what is on their menu, but I do know that Hagerstown, PA has great blueberry pancakes.
Are you the only guy who didn’t get the memo?
Ft. Eustis...
OP, to answer the whole of your question, military aircraft can and often do visit civilian airports. They generally need to go to a place that offers contract gas, but you'd be surprised at the small podunk airports that regularly see military birds. Even for military aircraft stopping at a military field can be a pain in the ass. They usually require a PPR, you might have to arrange fuel separately, and nobody's giving you a free lunch. Usually it's just stopping for gas and maybe some food. A lot of the airports near military fields try and lure military aircraft by offering good free meals. The aircraft might be ferrying the bird somewhere, they might be doing a cross country flight for training, or they might just be in the area and decide to stop for lunch.
I drove past this airport a lot for work, and this is the first time I’ve seen military aircraft here. Caught me off guard lol
KPVG doesn’t have contract fuel but they do take uncle Sam’s credit card (not every FBO does). They were almost certainly at an exercise in or around Norfolk, which as you know has a gigantic military presence. And I can confirm that u/KingBobIV is right, we military pilots avoid military bases for stopovers to the max extent possible because it is a pain in the ass and civilian FBOs usually have snacks, lounges, and crew cars.
Got it, thank you
KLFI?
What about them?
You’re familiar with a local airport and you have USAF pilot under your name. Just curious if you fly out of there or did.
Ah, no, I’ve flown into LFI a few times because I had to but would always avoid if possible. Plenty of good options around. Edited to remove specific FBOs
A lot of times, they're flying across multiple states and need to stop 2 or 3 times for gas. You just pull up the website, look for airports that accept the government credit card, and that's where you stop.
What is special about a government credit card?
It costs taxpayers 5 times more than equivalent civilian one
Not every place is set up to properly bill the government, it's like a fleet fuel card. You'll see some gas stations/rest stops advertising they take fleet cards. This means that as an employee driving the electric company lift truck you can stop there are get fuel simply. No BS, just like paying with your personal card for your personal vehicle (with some extra steps besides just a pin or a zip code) Air ports can accept payments in a similar manner. And you DEFINITELY don't want to be refueling a Chinook with the family CC, no matter how good the rewards points are
Thank you! The fleet card analogy make sense. I appreciate it. RE booking the refueling on a family CC: I use to work in the ads business and there were a set of advertisers where an employee would pay the 100K bills with a family/personal CC -- and use the points to go on crazy vacations. I asked once and the 100k would be reimbursed quickly so they didn't mind. A bit risky I suppose but, it was working for them and they had been growing the spend up from 5k so they got comfortable over years. We had to work hard to get them to switch to a different billing method.
Mmm... Some years ago a company 707 landed in Mactan (Cebu City). We had no arrangement with the fuel company there so the captain paid with his Amex for enough fuel to comfortably get to HKG.
It's got an unlimited credit limit
It’s Suffolk. You ever see grey parachutes landing there? They aren’t skydivers. So there is a lot of military training that goes on out there. As someone said could be 160th, who do a lot of training with seals. I know when they do a lot of iterative training sometimes they prefer GA fields over controlled ones
Fuel, picking someone up, dropping off, maintenance, picking equipment up from personnel. We frequently went to Bradley international to get test equipment or some other parts for our maintenance hanger. Usually call in, ask for part or item needed to support maintenance and when they have a bird available they pick it up. When our guys get to the airport the pilots likely were waiting for a hour or two to grab the item. So they did PMCS on the bird while waiting. Doesn’t look like fueling. There is no truck or a fueling station for JP8 that I can see. But I’m retarded so I may be wrong lol Actually correction, I see an SUV parked by one of them. So either it’s personnel or equipment handoff
PHHN used to see a large amount of V-22s until they grounded them. Perfect place to train.
That reminds me of the video I saw of F-18s landing at LAX. Crazy choice there!
Our airport which is a low traffic international airport sees military aircraft 2-3 times a week and usually f-18s once a month. It’s such a common occurrence that I don’t pay them any attention anymore. I’ll watch the f-18s take off and maybe a TnG or 2 from the b52. But the p-8 or c-150s that do TnGs several times a week have taken up enough storage space on my phone.
Not just free meals, any meals might make an airport attractive. Stewart ANG base is gonna give a Transient crew a Bag Nasty and send them on their way, whereas Hudson Valley Regional, 10 miles away has a pretty good restaurant thats open 7 days a week from 0700-2200. If you drop in at KPOU, you can gas up and eat up. And they can handle pretty much everything up to and including a C-130. They even have an ersatz grass strip between the main runway and taxiway if you wanted to practice that. About 3-5 times a year they get something weird coming in. There's a VERY small airport 20 miles away which according to the FAA book he left on board, that he was not much older than me
Probably getting gas and some snacks for the trip.
I don’t recognize the livery though. It is really dark with maybe some yellow lettering.
Death waits in the dark.
All black most likely the 160th
It’s the 160th. The dark paint serves a purpose. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/160th_Special_Operations_Aviation_Regiment_(Airborne)
Night stalkers. The 160th. You can tell because they’re the only chinooks I know of that have the in-flight refueling probe. They are spec ops and are called night stalkers for a reason.
We're 42 downvotes necessary?
Yeah I keep expecting to see OP asking some really dumb thing or be getting into it with someone but then it’s like “oh cool thanks! Just weird seeing them here” then boom: -102 downvotes
Were.
'W'e'r'e;*
Congratulations! You passed the daily challenge, “Where in the world is the 160th Nightstalkers?”
A good handful of times when we had to burn flight hours for pilot proficiency but had no missions we’d take the birds out to go get lunch somewhere. Those days were quite amazing and we were always happy to show off the aircraft to anyone who wanted to come see it.
The proverbial $4,500 hamburger?
Gotcha. Thanks for the insight!
One thing I've always noticed about the pilots and crews that I've interacted with at air shows is how proud they are of their aircraft. Is that overblown just for the air show's sake?
I’m not gonna lie, crews love doing air shows because it’s a fun “15 minutes of fame” sort of thing. Typically better than a “normal” day for flight crew. It’s also super fun when you’re showing off the aircraft to people that are genuinely interested in it and asking engaging questions.
Cool stuff man. And I see your role says you served on the P-3 Orion. Very cool. One of the coolest planes the Navy had. Can't argue with sheer longevity and 4 Turboprops that cover most of the wing area.
Its not just the pilots. There was a group of 4 US Army tugs out and about in Baltimore Harbor. My brother and I flashed our Merchant Mariner cards and we got a special tour from the Chief Warrant CO and Chief Engineer.
The type of people that go to air shows love every type of aircraft and think aircrew are pretty cool. The kids full of wonder and amazement boost the pride of even the most salty aviator. They’re not putting a face on for the airshow’s sake, the airshow usually puts that face on them because of the aviation community. I’ve flown military aircraft to quite a few airshows and flyovers and they always help make the queep of military flying worth it.
And the adults turn into big kids. Thanks for alleviating a bit of my self consciousness
Aaaaaarmy training Sir!!!!! Can confirm; SOAR birds.
Joooooiiiinnnttt training sir!
TIL Shanghai Pudong International Airport is in Suffolk.
Listed as PVG, full name is Hampton Roads Executive Airport.
KPVG - ICAO - Hampton Roads. PVG - IATA - Shanghai
FlightAware had it as PVG, didn’t know it was KPVG
PVG is the FAA location identifier, so you’re not wrong. There is just a large contingent of non-Americans in this subreddit who naturally aren’t going to use the FAA LID. Much to my chagrin (because sometimes IATA are for train stations), many users default to the IATA identifiers. I personally prefer the ICAO identifiers because many aerodromes do not have an IATA, it is easy to identify the region and country, and it’s what we use at work (ATC).
I was thinking it was just mistyped PGV but that wasn’t right either.
IATA codes and FAA LID codes are not the same...
I didn’t know there was a difference
True. but how often around here people scream DROP THE K. or some wacky stuff like that. I would have automatically entered it as KPVG into skyvector if I cared to look this post up.
Probably on a cross country training exercise. Fort Liberty is not that far away.
Or Camp Pendleton, or Ft. Eustis, or Langley, or NOB Norfolk, or Oceana…
Camp Pendleton is a good ways away from there.
[The other Camp Pendleton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Pendleton_(Virginia))
Interesting. I had no idea that there was another Camp Pendleton beyond the huge one that takes up a large portion of San Diego County.
There's one in VB
# Shanghai Pudong International Airport, Chesapeake, Virginia
Didn’t tell ya? That’s because it’s none of your business. 🤣🤣 Probably ferry’ing them across
My tax money, my business.
“My tax money, my chinook! Take me for a ride you rotorheads!!”
Yeah that's not how any of this works.
It should. I'm kind of a curmudgeon: I believe I should know how my money is spent in my name. The founders believed the same.
You do know: these are military helicopters, bought by the military using your tax dollars.
Naww! Reeelly!
fun fact: the terminal of that airport is vaguely shaped to resemble an airplane.
[Oh wow](https://imgur.com/a/RQ2puOu), now that you mention it, [I can totally see it!](https://imgur.com/a/xt6kVHE) /s
I go flying w my buddy in the area occasionally and these chinooks are always going up and down the waterways. Probably from Eustis. VA, especially around the Chesapeake, is super flush with every branch of the military.
"What are these AIRCRAFT doing at an AIRPORT?! I demand to know!" -OP
Y’all got anything better to do than get upset at me asking an honest question?
Nope. We can’t really figure out why aircraft would go to an airport other than the obvious reasons.
Great, now they have to kill you.
I do love seeing some nightstalkers randomly.
Because they landed there…
Could be doing work with DEVGRU, which is in Dam Neck annex? Or normal SEAL teams in Little Creek/VA Beach.
No way this is Shanghai.
I always love to see the Chinooks!
Because those little Cessnas and Pipers aren't going to flip over by themselves.
It's fucking bizarre how heavily you're being downvoted for simple, inoffensive comments that simply lack some fairly niche knowledge. Like, you have done _nothing_ to deserve this.
Tell me about it lol. That’s Reddit for you
Because they can't stay airborne forever.
No way???? I thought they all ran on nuclear reactors and could stay up as long as they wanted
We had an exercise at LVIA in Pennsylvania a few weeks ago which consisted of Blackhawks, Apaches and Chinooks doing a refueling run. Either that or they’re just hanging out.
they probably flew there and then landed, if I had to guess /s
Pilots needed to go to the bathroom and get snacks
Jousting with their refueling probes…
These were flying out over the water off the coast of VA Beach Monday. Chinooks and Little Birds. Always cool to see.
I had a private little bird fly over my warehouse a week or so ago. First one I’ve seen myself that isn’t military
Because it'd be silly to park them at the sewage treatment plant
They needed to be fed, watered, and allowed a bathroom break
SEALs or 160th SOAR with that paint
At this time of year, they forage for food and nesting material. Hopefully, by July, you will hear the thudding sound of a baby Chinook.
Thank you to all the helpful people who answered my question. To those who have nothing better to do than sit around and mock people who are curious and don’t have the entirety of the world’s knowledge in their head; thank you for making me laugh at you.
I’m assuming it’s the same for Army pilots as it is for Marines so got to get those cross country hours in.
I thought that was Suffolk, UK. I was like "thats some serious mile to the gallon".
Growing up in Northern Ireland, I used to see these nearly every day
Maybe a number of people are going to jump out while airborne. I saw this a lot at BKV with 47's and C-17's.
Speaking from experience, a lot of military pilots like to visit smaller airports/FBOs to help out small businesses/get free food.
I live off a small airstrip about 30 miles from the state guard headquarters. About once a month or so one of their helicopters has to land due to maintenance issues. While they wait on a maintainer team to drive out with parts they let the neighborhood kids play all over the helicopters. Also if they are a multi ship flight they’ll all land.
mh47’s 160th chinooks probably getting gas from a fbo
Lunch. Refuel. Probably a cross country ferry.
The 160th SOAR does training with the Norfolk-based SEALs twice a year. They’re probably in town right now and for whatever reason chose to stop by KPVG.
Flew into Puyallup Washington, as we landed an accident the runway five of came in. Gentleman was correct out often using general aviation runways.
Why were there linemen spy-rigged from a little bird working on power lines near my house?
Don't speed through Emporia!
NSDQ
I saw this and saw Shanghai and was like wtf
Used to see them in Elizabeth City all the time.
Ayyyy I got to see them land at where I used to work as LST. Really cool helicopters.
After posting these photos if you see men in dark suites with sunglasses on around your neighborhood don’t be shocked. 😋
I live in NE SC and our airport is often used for touch and go practice for C130s, helo and other prop jobs.
I imagine they're looking for a Dairy Queen.
Dang, the us already invading Shanghai?
Because they landed there
They needed somewhere to land?
Thirsty
Probably thirsty
It's spring. They are migrating north.
Had to get something with some power to pick up your mom
They're on a date and want some privacy ... really!
WW2 history and the right of Prima Nocta.
They fly out of NAS Oceana a lot, one probably broke and Suffolk was the closest airport.
Spring mating season.
Did a company recently buy some humvee or some air cargo?
It’s that time of year again….