It was an image that New Yorkers never wanted to see again: a jumbo jet trailed by two fighter jets buzzing dangerously close to the city’s most famous landmarks.

On Monday morning a 747 and two military planes circled the Statue of Liberty and flew close to the World Trade Centre site, causing panic among residents. Residents and office workers evacuated buildings and ran on to the streets, fearing a repeat of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, in which two hijacked airliners smashed into the Twin Towers, killing almost 3,000 people.

The flight turned out to be a photo opportunity involving one of Barack Obama’s official presidential airplanes, one of a series organised to get pictures of the aircraft in front of national landmarks.

The flight – carried out with little warning by the US Defence Department – was branded insensitive by Michael Bloomberg, the Mayor of New York. President Obama, who was not on the plane at the time, was reportedly furious when told of the flight by White House staff.

Locals – particularly office workers, construction workers and residents in high rise buildings – fled into the streets when they saw the planes, including a 747 sometimes used as Air Force One, flying as low as 1,500 feet above the Manhattan skyline.

Roy Renner, a construction worker in Manhattan, said that he feared the worst.

“I was thinking about what happened in 9/11,” Mr Renner told CBS news. “That was what I was thinking about, so I said: ‘Look, let’s get out of here’.”

Dominick Caglioti, who works in one of the city’s high-rise buildings, told the New York Post he was furious when he found out it was a photo opportunity.

"It's so stupid because they tell you about every fire drill, but they didn't tell us about this," he told the paper.

An administration official said that the purpose of the flight was to update file photos of the President's plane near the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbour.

The official said that the White House military office had told the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that it periodically updates file photos of Air Force One near national landmarks, such as the Statue of Liberty and the Grand Canyon.

The FAA notified the New York Police Department of the flight, telling them that photographs of the Air Force One jet would be taken about 1,500 feet above the Statue of Liberty at about 10am on Monday. The document was classified and marked as not for release to the public or the media.

Mr Bloomberg, who was not told about the flight, said that had he been notified he would have asked the Defence Department to cancel the exercise.

“Why the Defence Department wanted to do a photo op right around the site of the World Trade Centre catastrophe defies the imagination,” Mr Bloomberg said. “Poor judgment would be a nice way to phrase it.”

The director of the White House military office, Louis Caldera, took the blame a few hours later.

“Last week, I approved a mission over New York. I take responsibility for that decision,” Mr Caldera said. “While federal authorities took the proper steps to notify state and local authorities in New York and New Jersey, it's clear that the mission created confusion and disruption. I apologise and take responsibility for any distress that the flight caused.”

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