Flying Qaddafi Air

TRIPOLI, Libya — My interpreter, Ahmed, is flooring it down an airport runway, giddy with enthusiasm. He keeps talking about how he’s always wanted to push this hard on the gas, how he never thought he’d be driving his car on this vast flat asphalt. But in Free Libya anything is possible. Including a visit to Muammar al-Qaddafi‘s personal plane.

Our car accelerates toward the Afriqiyah Airways airplane standing apart from a cluster of others like a giant white turkey in the recently secured international airport. We’ve been lucky enough to be offered a tour of the runways from Mohammed Saad, a 24-year-old engineering student now part of the Zintan Brigade, a western mountain rebel unit that has set up shop in the airport.