More than 320,000 people were tracking the flight trail of a U. S. Army plane. The U. S. Navy could bring in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and perhaps bring her to Taiwan.
Flight tracking site Flight Radar 24 showed that another 321,000 people were tracking SPAR19 early Tuesday morning and that it was the most followed flight in the world, it’s unclear if Pelosi is recently aboard the plane.
SPAR19, a U. S. Air Force, left Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, but its destination is unknown and Flight Radar 24 indicates it simply as “N/A”. However, local media in Taiwan reported that Pelosi is expected to arrive on the island on Tuesday.
Pelosi would be the first House speaker to make a stopover on the island since Newt Gingrich in 1997 and the Chinese government reacted angrily to her trip, calling it a provocation.
Taiwan’s Apple Daily reported Tuesday that Pelosi flew to Asia in a Boeing C-40C with flight number SPAR19 and departed from Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport in Malaysia’s capital.
The number of other people who followed SPAR19 reached more than 320,000 on Tuesday before falling drastically, thousands continued to monitor the aircraft on Flight 24’s radar.
09-0540# SPAR19 is over Indonesia, heading east and followed by 300,000 users. 05-0730 # SPAR20 is on the floor of SZB Airport (Kuala Lumpur).
CNN political analyst Josh Rogin tweeted early Tuesday: “The plane likely carried by the #Pelosi delegation, #SPAR19, is in the air, after leaving Kuala Lumpur. It is taking a path around the Philippines to #Taiwán. Sources tell me it’s designed to minimize security risks. “
However, there was also an online hypothesis that Pelosi could simply travel on a separate plane with the SPAR20 call sign.
Joseph Wen, a member of the Open-Source Intelligence Community (OSINT), tweeted last Tuesday morning: “The #SPAR20 plane that took off from Tokyo landed at Subang Air Base, and the call sign #SPAR19 with Mrs. Pelosi is lately at that air base. “
Subang Air Base would share amenities with Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport.
Andy Boreham, a columnist for China’s Shanghai Daily, noted that many were also tracking planes heading to Taiwan.
“People are now looking on this plane, a civilian Beech King Air 360 with no public flight information, which is heading directly to Taiwan. It has also completely moved away from the South China Sea,” Boreham tweeted.
“This flight is now the seventh largest fan aircraft in the world,” he said.
She and Pelosi did not provide details about their layover in Taiwan, mentioning security protocols, while Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said it had no information when contacted via Newsweek. Pelosi’s planned stopover in Taiwan has not been officially confirmed.
Newsweek asked Pelosi for comment.
However, local Taiwanese media reported that Pelosi was due to arrive on the island at Taipei’s Songshan Airport at 22:20 local time. It would be 10:20 a. m. H. E. et would probably mean that Pelosi would be traveling at the time of writing.
The Chinese have issued a series of forceful statements about Pelosi’s visit.
On July 19, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said, “If Speaker Pelosi were to visit Taiwan, it would seriously violate the one-China precept and the prerequisites of the 3 China-US joint communiqués and damage China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
“This will have a serious negative effect on the political foundations of China-US relations and send a seriously wrong signal to the separatist forces of ‘Taiwan independence’. China firmly opposes such a visit,” Zhao said.
The United States, like many other countries, does not officially recognize Taiwan as an independent country. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory, but successive U. S. administrations have given access to the island, adding weapons.
Tensions over the scale of Pelosi’s continued advance into Asia and a Chinese missile destroyer gave the impression off the coast of Taiwan on Monday, according to the island’s government in Taipei.