2019. 13 August. The car was still warm from a trip to Logroño for a single aircraft — a B727 — when a story appeared on Twitter that set every alarm bell ringing:
“Vitoria, possible base for Trump’s Air Force One during the Biarritz G-7”

My mind started working. “Vitoria… three and a half hours from here, same as Logroño, for the AF1, which I missed in 2016…”
Interesting, to say the least. There was still a week to go, plenty of time for official confirmation and plenty of time to plan, I thought. How naive I was.

We entered the week of 19–25 August. The G7 was that very weekend, so things should already have started moving. With no confirmation yet, I started keeping an eye on the surrounding airports. Whenever the President of the United States travels, American support aircraft start moving too, such as C-17 and C-5, carrying official cars, limousines and all the equipment needed for the visit.

The next thing was to watch the NOTAMs at nearby airports. Wherever presidents were going, there would be restrictive NOTAMs. And there were: NOTAMs at Biarritz, but no sign of anything at Vitoria. Bad. A few movements into Biarritz started appearing, which did not look promising. I had studied the airport and seriously doubted that every aircraft would fit in there — especially a B747. I remained confident.

During that week, a C-17 arrived at San Sebastian. That was new. What on earth was a C-17 doing there??
To make things even more interesting, it turned out to be carrying Marine One, the helicopter used by the US President. That seemed to support the idea of using Vitoria for his arrival and then taking him to Biarritz by helicopter. Everything seemed to be falling into place.

Except Vitoria had not only failed to be confirmed — it had actually been discarded. So I had several theories:

• Trump would fly into some airport X larger than Biarritz, then be taken from X to Biarritz by helicopter.
• They would drop Trump at Biarritz and take the aircraft to X. No need for a NOTAM. But what about the helicopter?

Total chaos. And no way to plan anything.
The summary was:

We did not know where the aircraft were going.

We did not know where Trump was going.

We did not know when the aircraft were going.

The ideal scenario. Absolutely flawless.

Thursday, 22 August.
Several people on Twitter confirmed that Trump was going to Bordeaux on Saturday. Good, because Saturday was doable. No need to destroy myself driving straight after work. Bad, because it was BORDEAUX, France. More than seven hours by car.
Things were getting complicated. Very complicated.

That day I put the proposal out there on social media in case anyone fancied joining the adventure. Success or failure is better in good company. My timeline split into two kinds of people:

• Those warning me that AF1 was going to Bordeaux.
• Those warning me about the state of the border and calling me insane. (Were they right?)

Christ. Another variable: the border. It was G7 weekend, so obviously the border at Irún was going to be heavily controlled. There was a genuine chance we could get halfway there and be unable to cross. Or spend hours stuck and miss the whole thing. I started reconsidering the entire idea.

Then, on Thursday night, a friend messaged me. He was in. Misery loves company. Now there were two of us, which basically made us a crowd. Decision made: we were going.

That same night we booked a hotel in Dax, on the French side of the border, so we could sleep there and start Saturday with the border already behind us.

Everyone calling me mad felt a bit like they were saying, “you haven’t got the balls”, so by that point I was basically obliged to go. Backpack, cards, batteries, a few clothes — and off we went. The next day, straight from work onto the road.

We set off at around 3 on Friday afternoon. In the car, trackers open and everythink that could give us some information. Some G-7 aircraft were beginning to arrive at Biarritz before departing empty for Bordeaux. My theory appeared to be right.

Six hours of driving left. We had an alternative route for crossing the border via Pamplona and Roncesvalles, where apparently there were no problems. We would see. Everything was calm during the journey.
Until I saw a C-17 arriving at Torrejón. What now? Why???
I was already starting to panic at the idea of AF1 going to Torrejón while I was in France, and mentally searching for a painless way to end it all. But there was still no sign of AF1. We had to be careful. Stay calm.

Our strategically chosen hotel in Dax was right by Biarritz and about six hours from Madrid, so it gave us a roughly equidistant base in case the situation changed completely. We took a deep breath and carried on.

Past Pamplona, past Roncesvalles, spectacular road. And suddenly we were in France

Already? That easy? Yep. At around 22:00 we arrived in Dax. Checked in, dropped our things off and went to grab something quick to eat.
The plan was to sleep as much as possible. According to some tweets, the estimated arrival time in Bordeaux was 11:40, and Dax was only an hour and forty minutes away. We had loads of margin.
Finally, a bit of relaxation and something to eat. McDonald’s in France — at least in the south — is terrible. Important information.

Into bed. Still no sign of AF1. No info, nothing on the trackers. Nothing. Although it was still early. If the 11:40 arrival time was right, it should be leaving Andrews at around 5am, so I set several alarms for 4:30 and 5:00 to keep watch. Sleep in this hobby is… optional.

And there I was, setting alarms for four in the morning in a hotel in the south of France, all to photograph a single aircraft. Every now and then I would have a brief moment of clarity and wonder: what am I doing with my life? But I had to sleep. In a tiny bed, with mosquitoes buzzing around me.

Saturday, 24 August. 4:30am. First alarm goes off. To be fair, if aircraft are involved, waking up is never a problem. Time to scan the horizon. Absolutely nothing. Strange.
If the arrival time was correct, Trump should have been close to boarding, or there should at least have been some sign of movement. So I went onto Twitter and started digging through the White House press corps. Trump was talking about the G-7 at a press conference. He was running late.
Fine. Another nap.

Next alarm. Phone in my face again, one eye half open. Trump was boarding the aircraft. It was getting close. Still nothink on trackers. If this thing turned up invisible… “Air Force One” into the Twitter search box. Refresh, refresh, refresh…
Meanwhile, my friend was still completely unbothered, snoring away.

Finally, I read a journalist saying: “AF1 is airborne.” And sure enough, it appeared on the tracker. Finally. But no visible destination nor arrival time.
Pretty much the worst possible situation. We could see it, without knowing for how long, but we still had no idea where it was going. We were exactly where we had started.

I woke up my friend, we packed everything, got into the car and started driving across France. Destination: Bordeaux. With absolutely no confidence or certainty whatsoever. But we had to do it. AF1 was out over the Atlantic, beyond radar coverage. We were blind, but we had time.
We were relaxed enough, enjoying the drive, the sunrise and the morning mist. I was getting more tense by the minute, especially because rumours were circulating that they might be sending the aircraft to Poland — that was what it seemed to show on the tracker — because Trump was due to go there after the G7, and perhaps they would take him into Biarritz on a 757 instead. The whole thing was madness. A thousand rumours, zero confirmation.

We arrived in Bordeaux. People were starting to gather, which felt like a good sign. It did not necessarily mean anything, but it kept me optimistic. I started talking to the local spotters. Zero information. Nobody knew anything. I gave them an update with the estimated arrival time I’ve read last night and they looked at me strangely.

I could not tell whether they were impressed that I had that information, shocked that we had driven up from Madrid, or simply wondering why this rather dubious-looking bloke had turned up with a camera and radio in his hands. I preferred not to know.

A few SAM flights — short for Special Air Mission, the callsign used by the USAF for state missions — began appearing over the Atlantic near France. Most were heading to Biarritz. Then, suddenly, a 757 appeared suspiciously close to Bordeaux. Nothing had been scheduled on Flightradar arrivals…
And as quickly as it appeared, it vanished. Was it coming? Was it not? I told the French spotters, trying to make some sense of it. They had no idea either. Nobody did. But fine. If it came, we were there.

Bordeaux Airport, icao LFBD, has two runways — because apparently the situation needed even more excitement — the 23/05, and another crossing it at right angles, smaller and restricted for larger aircraft. So that one was not really a concern. That morning, runway 23 was active, and that was where all of us were. Camped out in a car park keeping watch, because the police were starting to move people on if they drove directly to the spotting location. More and more police kept appearing. Good sign.

I decided to move to the spot itself in case they closed the road running past the threshold. You have to think ahead. Suddenly I heard someone on the radio with an American accent being cleared to land. My buddy said it was the Easyjet aircraft already on approach. I was not convinced, especially as that aircraft was still seven or eight miles out.
So I grabbed the camera just in case. We were surrounded by trees, so you could not actually see the approach.
The supposed Easyjet got closer and…

Bingo. A 757 came in, despite there being no 757 scheduled. But another one was supposedly going to Biarritz.
WHAT THE HELL WAS GOING ON.

Right. Whatever was going to happen would happen. AF1 still was not showing up, and I was hungry. Breakfast time.
In the café I started thinking about that B757. Maybe it was carrying the First Lady, which would explain why it was not scheduled. And we still had no idea what was going to happen with Marine One.

Disorder. Chaos. At that point, the scene was basically this: me obsessing over a thousand theories on barely any sleep, standing in front of a coffee machine while the coffee poured straight through the gap because, naturally, I had forgotten to put a cup underneath. Anyone watching me must have been pissing themselves.

Refuelling complete. Back to the spot. Things looked different now. More people, television crews, press… Good sign. Trackers, WhatsApp, trackers, WhatsApp. For hours. Radio scanning every frequency. Nothing. Everything was still the same. It was imminent, due within an hour, and there was still no trace of it. More tense than Doraemon at airport security. Then suddenly, for barely a minute, it appeared.

IT’S HERE. Massive rush. We were in the right place, facing Bordeaux. I could not believe it. It was about to arrive and I was in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.

WRONG. While I was sending a voice note to a mate and walking back towards the spot, I saw an aircraft taking off from the direction they had previously been landing…
The voice note went silent. They had changed the runway configuration twenty minutes before AF1’s arrival. I could not believe it.

Fortunately I had studied all the spotting locations beforehand, and I immediately ran back to the car towards the place I had already picked out, while listening to the ATIS to confirm which runway was active.
Runway 05. Yep. We had to run. A lot. People — photographers, press, everyone — saw us hurrying towards the car and kept asking, “But what about the runway???” and I was basically going, “No idea, 05 according to ATIS,” without stopping.

At the same time, I had to look after a friend of a friend who was also somewhere nearby. The conversation went roughly like this:
– Mate, runway 05. I’m sending you the location on WhatsApp. RUN.
+ But the local spotters say it’s coming in on 23, and that some aircraft are only departing from 05 to save time.
– TRUST ME AND RUN.

On the way there. Fortunately, not too much traffic. I was listening to approach from the passenger seat, pressing my imaginary accelerator so hard with my right foot that it was practically level with the headlights.
Christ, the tension. It could not possibly be as easy as it had looked a little while earlier.

Then, suddenly, I heard it on the radio… “Bordeaux, good morning, Air Force One descending to runway 05”.
Jesus. AF1 was on the radio and I was listening to it. There it was. So close.

We reached the spot. A dirt track running parallel to the runway, right beside the fence. We were incredibly close, and the place was empty. There was only one other car. Well, and a Gendarmerie helicopter that had clocked us the moment we arrived.
I could not believe it — this time in a good way. There are moments when having to photograph through a fence is the least of your problems. This was one of them.
Checks: focus, card, battery, AF-C, ISO, aperture. On a loop. Ten thousand times.

Shaking.
And then it arrived. There it was. AF1, practically just for us — a couple of people.

We did it. Jesus Christ. That moment when you stop caring about the lack of sleep, the money spent, the brutal drive, the rushing around, the stress. Right there. Exactly there.

We had beaten the television crews, the press and the local photographers to it. It was unbelievable. Pure adrenaline. We had done it.

But we had not only beaten the television crews, press and local photographers… We had also beaten… the police. Gendarmerie and plain-clothes officers.

Three cars appeared from inside the airport, with five or six people in total. All armed.

They told us to get off the track. It went something like this:

– *Unintelligible noises*
+ English please?
– Get out of the way
+ But our car is over there, mate. You’re seriously going to make us drive across the field?
– GET OUT OF THE WAY NOW

I am normally quite keen on talking things through, but negotiating with an angry police officer over two metres tall and carrying an assault rifle is not really my speciality, so we accepted his very polite request.
Instead of following the track, we had to cut straight across the middle of the field. Fine, there would be an exit somewhere.
Spoiler: there was not. Nothing but brambles twice my height, completely impassable and no alternative route. And I was wearing shorts. Absolutely ideal.
So the situation was this: we were trapped in a field, mission accomplished, and if we went back the way we had come, we would probably get arrested. Then I suddenly saw a B757 taxiing. The one that had arrived that morning. It made sense. Trump and his wife would be taken to Biarritz on that. Mystery solved. So once it had left, I assumed the security presence would relax.
It took off. We waited a little while. “Back to the track? Back to the track.”

We had barely stepped onto it when we saw the same three cars coming back. Cue us running for cover. If they caught us there again, there was a very real chance we were going to have problems. Serious problems. But they did not see us.
Look right. Look left. And back onto the track towards the car.

Just when I thought it was all over, I saw another aircraft on approach. Earlier I thought I had seen a Russian civilian aircraft coming in, which might have been interesting. So I took the camera out.
The moment I focused on the aircraft, I said: “Damn… We’ve really screwed this up.”

It was another USAF B757. Another one. And if that was arriving, there had to be security around. Sure enough, the moment I photographed it, a Gendarmerie car appeared. Fortunately it was only one car, and the officer simply told us, “No photos.” We nodded as enthusiastically as humanly possible, apologised, and headed back to the car. The officer followed us from inside the fence, driving parallel to us to make absolutely sure we were leaving.
Where we had parked, there was an access gate into the airport — and another police car. I nearly had a heart attack as we drove past it. I could already picture myself getting my documents out and showing them the photos. But no. We were allowed to leave. Or rather, escape.

Now, finally, we had done it. Back towards Madrid without looking back. We had the photos.
We wanted to return via Irún because we had realised the border was nowhere near as bad as people had said. But… Biarritz was on the way.

Would we actually be stupid enough to drive into what was probably the most heavily secured city in the world that day?
Of course we would.

And not just the outskirts — right into it. Police everywhere, but we got in. We decided to park near the airport, in an area with a very heavy police presence.
After fearing for my freedom far too many times already that day, I decided to do things properly. I grabbed a hi-vis vest so I was clearly visible and asked the various officers.

“Hi. I want to take photos of aircraft taking off. Only the aircraft. Is that allowed?” One officer said yes, so we got on with it. It was all pretty uncomfortable, by the way.
A little while later, another officer came over and politely told us we could not stay there. Maybe further away, but not there. So we left.

Needless to say, before even setting foot in Biarritz I had hidden the memory card containing the AF1 photos, just in case I lost the pictures merely because I had decided to pass through the city. Always cautious. Assume the worst.
I found a place where we might be able to see departures, with no obvious security around. Camera, scanner, and wait.

I was spotting and monitoring aircraft in the middle of the city hosting the G7 summit. The feeling was horrible, though. Where we were, I felt as if we were under constant surveillance, and that if I made one sudden movement the police — or something worse — would appear.

It was taking a pointless risk. Enough was enough. We headed back to Madrid.

No problems at the border, coffee inside me, and a few hours later I was home. Safe, sound and still a free man. Against all odds, we had done it. 1,500 km in 24 hours, with total uncertainty, completely blind, and at times even with the security forces working against us. But yes. We did it.

With everything that could have gone wrong, somehow everything went right. With a thousand difficulties along the way, but right.
It took me several days before I fully believed it had actually happened. Without that element of luck, this story probably would not even exist. Or perhaps it would, but I would be writing it from prison. Who knows.

Follow your passion and your instincts, no matter how mad people say you are. On that trip, we were on the verge of failure 99% of the time. But somehow, something made sure we were in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.

If you do not try, then you really have failed — and you will have proved right everyone who called you mad. And above all, make sure you create interesting stories that you will remember for the rest of your life — preferably without getting hurt —

For me, this is one of those stories, and I would do it all over again without hesitation. Without these unusual moments, these bursts of adrenaline, I would have left this hobby behind a long time ago. But I am still here. Thanks to the Air Force One.