As Americans are racing to evacuate the Middle East amid an escalating conflict with Iran, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft has sent his team’s plane along to help.
A photo posted to the X account of Assistant Secretary of State for Global Public Affairs, Dylan Johnson, showed the plane adorned in the Patriots’ logo and colors sitting on the tarmac.
The State Department says the plane landed on Friday in Washington, DC.
‘Americans boarding one of the many State Department charter flights leaving the Middle East to the U.S.,’ Johnson wrote on X. ‘This plane landed safely this morning in Washington.’
According to Fox News, the Patriots ‘encourage’ the charter company operating the team’s planes ‘to use them for missions like this and other humanitarian and national interest type missions’ when not in use by the organization itself.
For example, in 2020, the Patriots’ team plane was used to transport N95 masks to the United States at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A New England Patriots team plane picked up fleeing Americans from the Middle East
Patriots owner Robert Kraft often lets the company that charters his planes use the vehicles for various humanitarian purposes, such as in 2020 when it delivered N95 masks during Covid
The Associated Press reported on Friday that the Patriots’ plane was the second evacuation flight to land at Washington Dulles International Airport. The Patriots did not pay for or arrange the flight themselves.
Johnson says that 24,000 American citizens ‘have safely returned to the United States from the Middle East’ since February 28.
This number doesn’t include Americans who relocated to other countries or are still making their way stateside.
In a post to Truth Social on Friday, President Trump said that the US is moving ‘thousands of people’ out of the Middle East as tensions between Israel, Iran and the United States continue to grow.
‘We are moving thousands of people out of various Countries throughout the Middle East. It is being done quietly, but seamlessly,’ he wrote Friday.
‘The State Department, under Secretary Marco Rubio, is doing a great job!’
