Air Force One is as much a celebrity as its powerful passenger — a witness to history, a symbol of American prestige and a flying war room.
However, the aircraft that is most often used to carry the US president is now 26 years old and showing its age. Only about 20 of the same Boeing model are still flying, many now carrying cargo in the developing world. Finding spare parts is a problem, so a new Air Force One will soon be commissioned — at a cost of more than $3 billion.
Air Force One has never been a single aircraft: it is a radio call sign for any plane that is carrying the president. In recent decades, however, the term has been all but synonymous with two customised 747-200 jumbo jets.
Described by the US Air Force as the most secure airplanes in the world, they were commissioned by Ronald Reagan and brought into service in 1990, under the first President Bush. One much-trumpeted feature was the onboard fax machine.
The new plane will be a heavily customised Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet. It will be bigger and more powerful than the 747-200 and have a longer range — about 7,800 miles. It will be capable of mid-air refuelling, be shielded to withstand the electromagnetic pulse of a nuclear explosion, and will carry measures to protect against missiles. The Pentagon is expected to commission the aircraft within weeks, but they may not come into service until 2023.
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Over the years, Air Force One has played many parts. In 1963, only 98 minutes after the assassination of President Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson was inaugurated in the stateroom of the Boeing VC-137C that carried the call sign.
The year after that harrowing event, President Johnson invited reporters aboard the plane for an impromptu press conference while dressed in a towel. “He’d shucked off his underwear and was standing buck naked and waving his towel for emphasis,” Frank Cormier, who was then White House correspondent for the Associated Press, wrote.
The plane carried Johnson’s body after his death in 1973, just as it had his predecessor. It also conveyed President Nixon’s coffin back to his native California 31 years later.
“If history had wings, it would probably be this aircraft,” Al Gore said of the same plane, which he used while vice-president.
For others, the plane is an aspirational symbol: a Kenyan woman named her baby AirForceOne when President Obama visited the country this year.
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It has also featured in many films, most notably the 1997 Harrison Ford thriller Air Force One. Ford, who plays a president on the aircraft when it is hijacked by terrorists, apparently got a look at the plane used by President Clinton. Unlike the Hollywood version, however, the real aircraft does not have an escape pod.
Air Force One has frequently been used to oil the gears of democracy. Political donors have often been rewarded with a flight. Legislators have been sweet-talked by presidents while ensconced in luxury at 30,000ft.
In 2012 David Cameron became the first world leader to fly with President Obama on Air Force One. The 70-minute trip, from Washington to Ohio to watch a basketball final, was described by White House officials as “a special gesture to show a very special relationship”.
Each of the aircraft’s passengers receives a certificate — proof that they once flew as a guest of the president.
On 9/11 Air Force One performed a rocket-like climb to carry President Bush away from Florida. It zig-zagged its way between US Air Force bases in Louisiana and Nebraska as it was considered safer than being in the White House — and then returned the president home when questions started to be asked about his whereabouts.
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The present aircraft has 4,000 sq ft of room on three levels, including a presidential suite with bedroom, office, bathroom and conference room.There is room for the president’s retinue — family, advisers, Secret Service, media, and the military aide who carries the codes to America’s nuclear arsenal. A doctor is always on board and it has facilities that can function as an operating theatre.
Little wonder, then, that President Obama has called the aircraft the biggest perk of being president. Mr Obama’s Air Force One costs taxpayers $206,337 per hour to run, reportedly the most expensive presidential plane to fly. He recently lamented that the day was coming when he would have to travel like a mere mortal and “start taking off my shoes again going through security”.
Flying in state
● Two customised, nearly identical Boeing 747-200Bs fly as Air Force One.
● After the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, Lyndon B Johnson was sworn in aboard Air Force One before it left Dallas.
● Air Force One flew Richard Nixon from Washington to California after he resigned. When the crew received confirmation that Gerald Ford had been sworn in, they changed their call sign to SAM (special air mission) 27000.
● The jets have 85 phone lines, 28 of them encyrpted, and 19 TVs, two-way radios and fax machines.
● They can be refuelled in mid air in an emergency.
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● For a short time during the Cold War, cameras that were powerful enough to read a car licence plate from 29,000ft were installed in the jets’ wheel wells.