Mayor Bill de Blasio hitched a ride home to New York City from his Canadian vacation on Thursday via an NYPD counterterrorism plane, the New York Post reported.
The mayor took a brief break from his weeklong vacation in Quebec to attend the one-year memorial for NYPD Detective Miosotis Familia, who was fatally shot while on duty in the Bronx on July 5, 2017.
De Blasio’s spokesman Eric Phillips confirmed to the Post that the mayor traveled on the NYPD plane, adding that it was his first time on board the Cessna 208 Caravan the department purchased last year for about $3 million. It is equipped with sensors that can identify radioactive bomb-making materials from a distance.
Sources told the Post the NYPD plane is housed at Long Island’s MacArthur Airport. A flight-tracking website showed a plane with an ID number that Wired reported was for an NYPD “spy” plane left MacArthur at 6:36 a.m. Thursday and arrived at Montreal-Trudeau Airport at 8:18 a.m. It took off within the hour and landed at Westchester County Airport at 10:58 a.m.
Around noon, De Blasio was giving remarks in the Bronx outside the NYPD precinct where Familia worked and where a street was being named in her honor.
Records reported by the Post show the NYPD plane left Westchester for Montreal at 1:48 p.m., and arrived at 3:34 p.m.
According to data, the NYPD plane usually makes trips of two or three hours that start and end at MacArthur.
It is unknown how much the plane trip cost, and the NYPD and de Blasio’s office would not comment on why de Blasio used the NYPD plane instead of a commercial flight.
“The NYPD, as a longstanding matter of policy, does not comment on specific details regarding the protection of elected officials,” a spokesman told the Post.
