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Air Force One at PHX Causes Traffic Jam on Runways: Before the Presidential motorcade even arrived at the airport, the North side of the airport was completely closed down to all air traffic. All takeoffs and departures were on the South runways only. With the two South runways relatively close together, they could only launch or land one plane at a time; they had to alternate- one landing, one takeoff. As you can imagine, this led to some delays; at one point, I counted twelve planes lined up on the taxiway waiting to take off.