International Railroad Discussion > Do the railroad companies in US have their own planes?

Here is a picture of one of the Vale mining planes used to carry employees. 
Does somebody knows if the railroad companies in US also have their own planes?

Pedro

Pedro Rezende
Vespasiano MG,

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yes they do

Painted with the railroad colors too?

dan Wrote:
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> yes they do

Posted from Android

Pedro Rezende
Vespasiano MG,
https://youtube.com/c/minasgeraisrailways1

I've seen a shot of a jet for R J Corman.
 

Stanley Jackowski
Valrico, FL

Believe it or not the corporate person who was over our steam program was also in charge of the Commissary department and the corporate jets.
Our steam crew got to tour one of the corporate jets down in Omaha one time.

Bob Krieger
Cheyenne, WY

There's a joke to be made regarding Pan Am, but I'm not sure if they actually own any planes anymore.

Most big corperations that use their own planes lease them. And normally do not have any markings at all other then their registration number.

Union Pacific has a =12px2014 DASSAULT FALCON 2000EX jet.  Its a 19-passenger aircraft.  Its registry/tail number is N845UP.  That number is interesting, since the last steam engine purchased by UP I believe was the 844.  Thus it is numbered right after the 844.  The UP is obvious as well.  The jet is light biege with some red stripping but as no name or anything else to ID its owned by the Union Pacific.

BNSF6400 Wrote:
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> Union Pacific has a =12px2014 DASSAULT FALCON
> 2000EX jet.  Its a 19-passenger aircraft.  Its
> registry/tail number is N845UP.  That number is
> interesting, since the last steam engine purchased
> by UP I believe was the 844.  Thus it is numbered
> right after the 844.  The UP is obvious as
> well.  The jet is light biege with some red
> stripping but as no name or anything else to ID
> its owned by the Union Pacific.

UP has 3 Dassaults, N844UP, N845UP and N846UP.  They are white with red and yellow striping, red tails with an American flag decal like their locomotives.  I believe BNSF uses fractional ownership; one of Warren Buffett's other investments is in NetJets.

The SP had a Lear Jet in the mid 80s.  Mostly for the President and the Board of Directors, but they used it to haul crews during the strike in '82.
They flew Don McCall and I with our head brakemen from Ontario to El Paso.
G

I am curious what Norfolk Southern has now. At the time of the N&W-Southern merger in 1982, it had quite a (combined) fleet.

Don't forget the impressive fleet of aircraft owned now and in the past by Dennis Washington, MRL owner. We used to see his Gulfstream IV at VNY quite a bit (registered to DRW Financial); he now has an ex-NetJets BBJ (private 737) and a hangar with the Washington logo at Palm Springs.

KCS had (may still have) fractional ownership of a Falcon.
Hulcher has a Cessna Citation VII, I think. 

Fractional ownership makes much more sense these days, thru Flexjet, NetJets or one of the other programs out there. Also easier to make flights literally and figuratively "under the radar." 

 

Alco251 Wrote:
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> Also easier to make flights
> literally and figuratively "under the radar." 

Literally "under the radar" in Class A/B/C/D/E airspace? I don't think so.

Ray   

Also unnlikely due to jets only becoming efficient at higher altitudes(flight levels) which require radar transponders.

Bad choice of words on my part. Figuratively, flying "under the radar" means fractionals allow people to come and go without any obvious telltale signs. My former employer had an impressive fleet of jets under their own registration, yet often used fractional ownership flights during delicate negotiations (mergers, acquisitions) so the bosses could come and go almost unseen, by prying eyes at airports or on internet sites.

I was working at a big airport years ago as aircraft crew, waiting for my pilot at the executive terminal and was looking at a copy of Fortune Magazine, with a midwest financier on the cover. Ten minutes later a Gulfstream jet pulls up and that same guy gets out, walks thru the waiting room, shakes hands with somebody and they walk out to a waiting helicopter for a short hop somewhere. I turned to the base manager and said "Hey...that's S-- Z---..." He was shocked that I recognized him and I held up the magazine. "Top secret.." I said. "He's trying to fly under the radar today...that's not his jet," said the base manager. First time I ever heard the "under the radar" phrase.

I recall that Northern Pacific had a corporate flight department as a stand-alone company, "Northern Airmotive" complete with NP monad logo. Believe they had a marked hangar at Holman Field in St. Paul..they had a picture of it in one of the early BN annual reports IIRC.

The biggest fractional ownership operator in the US is NetJets, owned by Berkshire Hathaway. Although that makes it a corporate cousin to BNSF, their railroad roots go much deeper than that. The company was originally Executive Jet Aviation, based in Columbus, Ohio, whose corporate roots can be traced to the stand-alone corporate flight department of the Pennsylvania Railroad.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/18/18 18:04 by Alco251.