This video was made possible by Audible. Get a free audiobook from audible exclusively
by going to audible.com/HAI. If you’re a normal person this is a super-interesting
episode about a secret airline that brings secret people to secret places within the
US. If you’re a US government official or anyone else that could be peeved by me spreading
semi-secret facts, this episode is about bricks. A brick is a building material used to construct
walls, floors, or other building elements in a fast and cost-effective way. Interestingly,
bricks come in different sizes depending on where you are. In the United States they’re
7⅝ × 3⅝ × 2¼ inches while in Australia they’re 9 × 4⅓ × 3 inches, and that
is why bricks are so interesting. This video was made possible by… ok that’s normally
enough to get them to leave. Now, if you’re still watching, buckle your
bootstraps because we’re going for a ride, just not on these planes because they’re
part of JANET which is based here at the Gold Coast Terminal in Las Vegas, weirdly about
3,000 feet from where the Hacienda hotel from episode 3 was. JANET probably stands for “Joint
Air Network for Employee Transportation” but we’re not really sure because its secret.
Some people also call it “Just Another Non-Existent Terminal.”
But here’s what we do know. Every morning this parking lot fills up with hundreds of
cars, the planes take off, and then in the evening the planes come back and the cars
leave. We know they have six Boeing 737’s and five prop planes. We also know who owns
the planes. You can go right onto the FAA website, pop in the registration number of
one of the planes, and it’ll tell you its owned by the US Air Force. But the US Air
Force doesn’t operate these flights, and we’re not 100% sure who does, at least nowadays.
There used to be a defense contractor called EG&G which played a central role in the development
of nuclear weapons They were the original operators of the gold coast terminal and JANET
Airlines and how do we know that? Because they posted a job listing. EG&G was acquired
by the Carlyle Group in 1999 which was acquired by the URS corporation in 2002 which was acquired
by AECOM in 2014, so as far as we know, AECOM currently operates the flights, but the real
question is where do they go. Most of the time, the planes take off from
Las Vegas airport and head north until they turn off their transponder and disappear from
trackers after about 15 minutes in the air. But what’s telling is where they drop off,
because right here is Area 51—the place that, according to the US government doesn’t
exist. Every sign would point to these JANET flights being the Area 51 employee shuttles
for personnel living in Las Vegas. The airspace around Area 51, known as Restricted Area 4808
North, is some of the most protected airspace in the world. Any unauthorized plane that
enters will be quickly met by fighter jets and likely shot down, but these planes regularly
go in and out with no problem. While we can only speculate that the planes
go to Area 51 based off where they drop of tracking, we know for certain that they also
go to the Tonopah Test Range. This site is where the US military develops and tests many
of its weapons and, while its still highly classified, the JANET planes that go here
don’t turn off their transponder meaning that we know for certain that planes land
here. JANET planes have also been seen regularly
going to China Lake, a Navy research and development site, Plant 42, the site where the US Air
Force builds its planes, and Edwards Air Force Base, another site home to classified research
and development projects. What’s really impressive about JANET is how little we know
about it despite it flying hundreds or even thousands of people per day. You can see these
airplanes in full sight when you land at Las Vegas Airport and yet we still can’t say
with 100% certainty who or where these planes fly.
But what we can say with certainty is how to get a free audiobook—you head to audible.com/HAI.
As you probably know, Audible is a leading provider of audiobooks and other spoken word
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you can only find on Audible like Artemis by Andy Weir—the author of the Martian—which
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