Explained | Why does the Trump administration want a new Air Force One?

Washington: President Donald Trump has said the United States needs a more “impressive” Air Force One, on par with the sleek jets he has seen in oil-rich nations in the Middle East.

The two 747-200s that serve as Air Force One now — depending on when the president is on board — are more than 30 years old and were meant to be phased out of service years ago.

Efforts over the last 10 years to replace them have met with repeated delays, and the planes aren’t expected to be finished before Trump leaves office, though perhaps 2027 at the earliest.

So he has said he plans to accept a Boeing 747-8 known as a “palace in the sky” as a donation from the Qatari royal family to the Pentagon, to then be turned over to his presidential library. The plan — which Qatari officials have said is merely under discussion but not finalized — has drawn immense blowback, including from Republicans, as Trump has defiantly insisted there’s no problem with it.

The aircraft now serving as Air Force One are safe, but they are timeworn, and airplanes are meant to fly only for a certain amount of time before they need to be retired.

“They are just old airplanes — and airplanes have finite lives,” said Frank Kendall, who until early this year served as the Air Force secretary, and who first started working on contracts to replace the two planes during the Obama administration. “There is no question about it that these planes need to be replaced.”

There are fewer than two dozen 747-200s that fly globally anymore, and replacement parts require work to obtain and often have to be custom made.

Presidential jets tend to last for a few decades. In 1990, the U.S. military began using the 747 jets that still fly today, with three floors of space that include a conference room, as well as specialized communications equipment.

The journey to develop new jets to serve as Air Force One — the call sign for whatever plane the president is traveling aboard — has been long.

It began when President George W. Bush initiated plans for two new presidential aircraft midway through his second term. Bush had experienced the importance of a functioning presidential aircraft when he and some advisers spent the eight hours after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks traveling aboard Air Force One around the East Coast, the safest place he could be at the time, as he directed the response.

During President Barack Obama’s tenure, the plans for new planes did not accelerate until his second-to-last year in office. In 2015, the military chose Boeing to deliver 747-8 frames for the new aircraft.

They were to be rebuilt with specifications allowing them to withstand radiation that might be in the air after a nuclear blast and certain types of missile attacks, as well as the ability to refuel while in the air.

The 747 itself cost about $250 million, Kendall said, but the final Air Force One plane comes with a price tag of at least $2 billion — which Kendall said illustrates just how comprehensive and time consuming the overhaul of the jet is before it is ready to carry the president.

The work includes building a flying version of the Situation Room inside the plane, a communications system enabling the president to get in touch with any military or political leader in the world, a mini medical clinic, and defensive measures in case there is an enemy missile trying to take it down.

“It’s not just an airplane anymore,” Kendall said. “It is a flying White House.”

In 2018, with progress on the planes moving slowly, Trump’s administration granted Boeing a contract — renegotiated from one that had existed under Obama — for two new 747-8 planes. Instead of building them from scratch, they would use the frames of jets built for a Russian airline that went out of business.

They were to be equipped with military hardening and defense systems, in the hopes that Trump might be able to fly on them at the end of his first term.

But the coronavirus pandemic helped cause a fresh round of delays. The company that was contracted to produce the specialized interior — not just belt buckles and seats but communications and storage systems — went out of business. Boeing also saw supply line shortages for some parts.

Yet Boeing suffered a string of problems unrelated to the pandemic, as well. Among them, the Federal Aviation Administration identified cracks in frames of Boeing 747-8 planes that required extensive fixes.

All of that has meant the planes that were to be delivered by 2024 are still behind schedule, and may not be ready by the time Trump leaves office.

That has infuriated Trump, who once owned an airline shuttle service and knows a great deal about planes, having owned private planes over time. Trump owns a used 757 airplane known as Trump Force One that has been decorated with gold and mahogany tables.

Its color scheme is blue, red and white — the same colors he wants for the new Air Force One, to replace the familiar robin’s egg blue of the current design. Trump has traveled around with a model of the new Air Force One since he left office, proudly displaying it in the main room at Mar-a-Lago, his private club in Florida, in the years between his two terms.

But the age of the current Air Force One planes seems to bother Trump less than the visuals. He believes they don’t possess the level of impressive symbolism of America that he thinks they should, and that the leaders of the oil-rich nations he is currently visiting have nicer planes than the ones he travels on.

“The plane that you’re on right now is almost 40 years old,” Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity during an interview aboard Air Force One as Trump traveled to the Middle East this week.

“And when you land and you see Saudi Arabia, and you see UAE, and you see Qatar and you see all these — and they have these brand-new Boeing 747s mostly, and you see ours next to it, this is like a totally different plane. It’s much smaller. It’s much less impressive, as impressive as it is,” Trump said.

“And we’re the United States of America. I believe that we should have the most impressive plane,” he said.

But taking possession of a gifted Qatari jet is only the first step of a very complex and lengthy process that would be necessary to prepare it to become a true Air Force One, Kendall said.

“What they will get is a luxury airplane designed to fly around an emir or some member of the royal family in an opulent flying palace,” he said. “But that is nothing like the capability and unique features of an Air Force One. The Air Force can paint it with the colors that President Trump wants, but it won’t be an Air Force One.”