HIGH-LEVEL VISIT TO ROANOKE AIRPORT A BIT TOUCH AND GO

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, April 8, 1993                   TAG: 9304080247
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ED SHAMY
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short
HIGH-LEVEL VISIT TO ROANOKE AIRPORT A BIT TOUCH AND GO
Shortly before noon on Wednesday, a jet whooshed low over Mill Mountain, zeroed in on a runway at Roanoke Regional Airport and lowered its landing gear.
The jet streaked in over Valley View Mall, touched the runway with its wheels - leaving a small puff of smoke - and pulled up again.
Banking west into a cloudless sky, the Gulfstream III jet cleared Fort Lewis Mountain and flew in a giant oval, ending up once again over Mill Mountain.
It bore no airline's insignia - just a U.S. flag on the tail, a blue underbelly and, stretched across the white fuselage, "United States of America."
Half a dozen times the eight-passenger jet touched the runway and roared away before finally climbing to the northeast and disappearing.
It may well have been on its way home to Andrews Air Force Base in Camp Springs, Md., just outside the nation's capital.
The base is home to the Air Force's Airlift Wing, which provides air transport to the president, vice president, members of Congress, Cabinet secretaries, judges and high-level military officers.
The jet that visited Roanoke on Wednesday and about 20 other jets are in the fleet.
To acquaint themselves with airports throughout the region, Air Force pilots occasionally take the jets for touch-and-go runs, as do the pilots of military jets at Air Force bases in Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB