SPAR19, a United States Air Force Boeing C-40 Clipper aircraft thought to be carrying Nancy Pelosi, has disappeared from flight tracking service FlightRadar24 after being monitored by as many as 79,000 users at one point.
Searching for the SPAR19 callsign or the aircraft’s registration number – 09-0540, brings up a “live flight not found” popup indicating that the plane is “either out of coverage or has already landed.” Users who click “show aircraft history” are met with a “Sorry, historical data for this aircraft is not available” notice.
The plane was last spotted coming in for a landing at the Hickam Air Force Base outside Honolulu, after taking off from the Travis Air Force Base near Fairfield, California and making its way west across the Pacific to Hawaii. The plane arrived in California earlier in the day Saturday for a one hour stopover following a cross-continental flight from Joint Base Andrews outside Washington, DC.
SPAR19 became FlightRadar24’s most tracked aircraft amid suspicions that Pelosi was onboard, with users tagging the plane with various comments, from “And so it begins” to “WW3 voyage” amid concerns over the implications of her possible trip to Taiwan amid warnings by Chinese officials to stay away.
Pelosi herself has not provided any details about her travel plans. On Friday, she told reporters that she never talks about her travel itinerary, “because, as some of you know, it’s a security issue.”
The speaker’s possible trip to Taiwan as part of a larger Asian tour, first reported on by the Financial Times last week, sparked fury in China, with Chinese English-language media suggesting her plane should be intercepted by Chinese Air Force jets and accompanied into Taipei. On Thursday, President Xi Jinping warned President Joe Biden that “one who plays with fire will certainly burn himself,” in reference to Taiwan.
Pelosi, formally the senior-most official in Washington after the president and vice president, would be the first speaker of the House to visit Taiwan since Newt Gingrich did so in 1997. That trip came on the heels of the 1995-1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis, caused by Washington’s move to grant then-Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui a visa to the United States.
Beijing has repeatedly called on Washington to stick to the terms of the One China Policy, as well as the three communiques which established China-US relations, which prohibit US officials from formally interacting with Taiwanese officials. The People’s Republic considers Taiwan an integral part of China that is destined for eventual reunification with the mainland.
Pelosi is no stranger to ticking off the Chinese. In 1991, the California congresswoman and a pair of colleagues were invited to visit Beijing, where they unfurled a provocative banner about the 1989 events at Tiananmen Square.
Former President Donald Trump took to Truth Social on Friday to blast Pelosi over her latest stunt, calling her “Crazy Nancy” and accusing her of inserting herself into tensions and causing “great friction and hatred.”
“The China mess is the last thing she should be involved in – she will only make it worse,” Trump wrote.
President Biden has not publicly ordered Pelosi not to travel to Taiwan, but told reporters last week that the Pentagon had informed him that it’s “not a good idea right now.”