WELLINGTON, Fla. — When President Trump returns home to Mar-a-Lago, his final approach to Palm Beach International Airport takes his plane over neighborhoods in Wellington and Belle Glade.
But when he flew home from the Daytona 500 Sunday, it was not Air Force One causing the commotion.
Retired Air Force general says fighter jet was likely reacting to a private plane
It was a fighter jet that roared over Wellington's Sugar Pond Manor neighborhood.
"We heard it once, we heard it twice and then we came outside," said Claudio Alonso, who rushed outside his Wellington home with a cell phone at the ready to get pictures of the plane and perhaps the "Top Gun" pilot.
"He came down really low and I was like, 'That's a fighter jet,'" Alonso told me, as he reconstructed his attempts to get video of the fast-flying jet. "I started looking around and I'm getting dizzy going in circles. And there he is again! So, I started following him again."
Alonso had been watching the Daytona 500 on television, and he saw video of Air Force One take off from near the racetrack.
Minutes later he heard the rumble of the fighter jet outside his home as the president was headed to Mar-a-Lago.
WATCH: Claudio Alonso reenacts the dizzying path of the jet
I asked retired Air Force General Richard Newton about the fighter jet over Western Palm Beach County.
"It appears that it was an F-16 that was already in the area flying in and around the president's location, or it might have been scrambled out of Homestead Air Reserve Base," said General Newton.
WPTV heard from Homestead Air Reserve Base, and they said the jet did not originate there.
During his time in the Air Force, General Newton oversaw the Air Force One program.
He says it's likely that before the president's arrival, a private plane flew through restricted air space.
"The pilot in this aircraft in this case, maybe didn't have any idea that they were transitioning through this area," said the general.
I reached out to the U.S. Air Force to find out why the fighter jet was flying over Wellington, but my calls were not returned.
