Online flight tracking exposes FBI Aerial Surveillance over San Bernardino Mosque after Terrorist Attack

December 5, 2015 Aviation, Terror, Troubled Areas
David Cenciotti

FBI aircraft have been particularly active over San Bernardino, California, during and after the mass shooting.

As already highlighted on Twitter, several assets, including FBI planes and media helicopters, could be tracked online on Dec. 2, during the San Bernardino terrorist attack.

Interestingly, the following days, the FBI conducted aerial surveillance in the vicinity of the Dar Al Uloom Al Islamiyah-Amer mosque in San Bernardino.

The activity was conducted by an aircraft registered to PXW Services (a fake company established by the FBI), that loitered for 4 hours near the mosque on Dec. 3. Similar surveillance missions were conducted the next day, including a flight by another FBI aircraft with registration number N404KR.

The mosque was visited regularly by one of the attackers, Sayed Farook, and is approximately 5 miles away from the initial attack site at the Inland Regional Center.

You can view an animation of the surveillance flight (based on FlightRadar24 data) prepared by The Aviationist’s contributor Eric Rosenwald here:

Many thanks to Eric Rosenwald for contributing to this post.

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About David Cenciotti
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David Cenciotti is a journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of the world’s most famous and read military aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for major worldwide magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft, and many others, covering aviation, defense, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown several combat planes with different air forces. He is a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a graduate in Computer Engineering. He has written five books and contributed to many more ones.

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6 Comments

  1. A few months ago a Cessna 172 or 182 was circling a particular suburb in the city I live in (major southern city). At first I thought that they were probably doing photo work but they circled for at least 1 1/2 hours. Maybe I know why now.

  2. Yeah. It has three propeller blades, a distinctive tail and an inherently higher pointing nose. But yeah, regardless, it’s definitely not even close to a PC-12

    • If you look up the registration number, N657TP, it gives you information on the aircraft type, owner, etc.

    • If you look up the registration number of the aircraft, you will find information on the owner and the aircraft type. That’s how we know that it was a Cessna 182.

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