Yep. They were loud.
So if you were outside when those F-18 fighter jets swept over Lincoln last week, you’d remember it.
“We get those periodically,” David Haring, executive director of the Lincoln Airport Authority, said Tuesday. “We had two or three taxi in over a period of about three days that I saw.”
The jets were likely dropping in to refuel on a cross-country mission, Haring said.
Where they came from — or where they were headed — he didn’t know.
But he did know this: “They’re probably the loudest aircraft we have in here.”
A close second might be T-38s, supersonic jet trainers that regularly visit the airspace above Lincoln.
Since the Lincoln Airport Authority shares space with tenants, including Duncan Aviation, Silverhawk and the Nebraska Air National Guard and its 155th Refueling Wing, all sorts of aircraft are coming and going.
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And planes from Offutt Air Force Base’s 55th Wing will find a temporary home at the Lincoln Airport in the next year or so, when the base in Bellevue begins a runway replacement project.
Planes from Offutt routinely fly above the city already, Haring said, conducting practice runs where the airspace is less congested than Omaha.
“But you’ll see a little bit of an uptick.”
And it could be that surprising roar of jets overhead — F-18s or 747s — is because of a closed runway that is changing a few flight paths.
It's temporary, Haring said. The Lincoln Airport project is set to be finished by late September or early October.
On Tuesday morning, things were relatively quiet on the north edge of town.
And though it doesn’t happen often, Haring does know when an F-18 is back, even if he has his head in a pile of paperwork.
“They take off right outside my window. And when they take off, they rattle the window.”