2024 – F-18 Fighter Jets Coming in Low Over Teterboro
……………………………………………..(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on November 23, 2024)
This happened by Teterboro Airport (TEB) on Sunday, November 17. Basically, it was a jets-for-the-Jets event.
Two F-18 fighter jets were to do a flyover of nearby MetLife Stadium at 1pm before the Jets-Colts game.
Courtesy of the Daily Voice:
I live about 3 miles north of TEB. I heard nothing from home on Saturday morning, so they must have arrived from a direction other than north.
Sunday morning, the first thing I did was to see if any private jets were coming into TEB from the north, meaning that they’d be flying by near me. They were!
That meant I wouldn’t be able to photograph their Teterboro departure from home because they’d be heading south. I decided I’d try to catch their return to TEB.
I’ve done this before, so I know where to park on Rt. 46 – directly across the highway from TEB – at some industrial facility, whose parking lot is always empty on Sunday.
There’s a nearby traffic light on the highway, so I can cross 46 and walk up between the road and the TEB steel fence that has lots of spaces between its bars to shoot through.
Since the aircraft would be coming from the north, I could just sit against the fence and see the aircraft approaching.
NOTE: Click any image that says “PANO” to fully enlarge it.
Back to that parking lot: when I drove onto 46 to use the lot’s entrance, I was shocked to see the place jammed with spectators who were doing the same thing as me (the info was in local papers) – PANO:
This is only part of the crowd and I took this shot later on from across the highway.
It was tough to find a parking space, but I got one, next to a family and their dog. I thought I might have pulled in a little too close to the dog, so I got to be friendly with them by first asking if their dog was OK.
They then told me I just missed the 12:45pm jets’ departure, but since that exit headed south, the jets were too far away to get any good photos – especially through that steel fence. They thought they got shots of the bright red exhaust through the fence spaces, but from across the highway, those spaces were miniscule and they got nothing.
Everyone in that lot was now waiting to get the jets’ 1:05pm return from MetLife after they swung around and came in from the north. That meant they would see them the moment they cleared the buildings that were right behind them.
From experience, I knew that I would be able to see them earlier from across the highway (and against the fence). If I went there, I would also be able to – hopefully – see the landings unobstructed by shooting through the (now-wide) fence spaces.
I excused myself and headed down to the traffic light, crossed the highway and walked up to an area across the road from where I had been.
It’s not easy (or especially safe) to be walking on this side of the highway, but it can be quite rewarding photographically. There’s not even a curb on the highway and there’s a carved-out ditch between the road and the TEB fence. The ditch is usually quite muddy…………thankfully, however, a 3-month drought has lessened its soupiness.
There are also a lot of rocks on the incline between the ditch and the fence, making walking (and sitting) difficult.
Here’s a shot of the ditch and the highway that I took from where I was sitting because it was the least difficult section to navigate:
Since the planes took off heading south, they started from the northernmost part of the runway – RIGHT behind me – making it easy to shoot through the fence unobstructed…………….like this:
Close enough?
Would you like to see it take off?
Now I’m starting to have regrets about not being in this spot at the 12:45 departure of the two jets. Either I would have gotten some great takeoff video or I would have gotten my ass fried from the fiery exhaust.
Can’t worry about that now because HERE COME THE JETS! (singly). And they’re NOT coming straight at me…………..they’re way over to the left:
You’ll notice that there are now a bunch of cars on the side of the road. The cops had just chased a lot of cars that had done the same thing, but others quickly took their place. I don’t see very many people out of their cars and taking pictures of what’s going on above them.
Because I expected the jets to be relatively close overhead, I was in cellphone mode to shoot stills. Had I known they’d be further away like this, I’d have used my Canon to zoom in. This happened so quickly, there was no time to also shoot video.
Everybody had been expecting to first see the jets during their swing-around from the south where you’d see them over one end of the highway or the other, but I saw (and heard) nothing.
Personally, I fully expected to first see them coming directly at me from above the buildings and being right overhead as they crossed the highway and fence to land.
I was feeling pretty smug about that until I suddenly saw the first one over to the left. All I could do was take a couple of stills and then try to turn around and shoot through the fence to try to get the landing.
It’s far from great, but it’s all I could get:
Meanwhile, the other jet came in while I was still shooting this one (whose wheels appear to have not yet touched the ground).
I’m guessing that if I had gotten there earlier and saw where the jets originally took off from, that would have given me an indication of the angle they’d come back on.
Perhaps a longer, diagonal runway was necessary for this type of jet for takeoff and landing. That’s what their return at the northwest corner of the airport tells me. If I had seen them take off from there, I may have camped out on that corner for their return and gotten directly-overhead shots.
Oh well………maybe next time.
After the jets landed, I wasn’t hearing any cheering from across the highway, so I guess everyone was a bit disappointed and they all quickly left. I looked around online, but couldn’t find any pix of the event from their angle.
But I wasn’t done!
A couple of years ago, there was a similar situation. I knew that a fighter jet had landed there because I heard it from inside Hackensack Hospital when it flew low overhead on approach to TEB.
After my doctor appointment, I drove there and started to drive around the airport’s perimeter, stopping to check out open views until I found the jet and took pictures through a chain-link fence.
Last-minute addition: after an extensive search – I didn’t even know which month or year to start looking in – I found this PANO image from June 9, 2018:
I drove to the same spot, saw 3 or 4 people standing by the fence, parked the car in a non-space, and this is what I first saw through the fence:
One of the F-18s was visible – though more distant – between two nearby non-military jets…………..exactly as I remembered it from 2018.
I liked the look of the jet to the right, so I took a PANO pic of that with the F-18 included:
I zoomed in on the F-18 just as another plane was landing………click! (PANO)
This is the best closeup and I’m guessing that that’s the pilot:
I started talking with someone with a blissful smile on his face. He seemed thrilled to also find the F-18. I showed him the schedule that indicated there was one more “event”: their 6pm departure. He lit up.
“You gonna be here for that?, I asked.
“YEAH!!!”
I didn’t mention that it would be dark by then. Why dampen his enthusiasm?
By now, the three other people who had been hanging out at another part of the fence were gone, so I went over there to see what kept them there.
Both F-18s!
But the wing of a nearby plane pretty much blocked the view of the one I just shot. However, when I got down near ground level, I got this big PANO:
Finally – both jets! And there’s a gathering near the previously-“missing” jet that seems to include pilots, airport crew and what looks like a New Jersey State Trooper.
OK – got the shot I wanted.
NOW I’m done!
Mahalo Cuz!
ALOHA