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Boeing has postponed delivery of Air Force One until 2029.
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That means the new planes likely won’t be delivered until after the end of Trump’s second term.
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The $3.9 billion deal with Boeing has suffered several setbacks since 2018.
Boeing’s delivery delays are hurting President-elect Donald Trump’s dreams of flying a new Air Force One plane.
The project to build two new jets is so behind schedule that Boeing has told the U.S. Air Force it expects to deliver the planes in 2029 or later, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. This means the planes may not be ready until after the end of Trump’s second term.
In 2015, the Air Force selected Boeing to build two new aircraft to replace the aging 747 presidential fleet. In 2018, the aircraft manufacturer and the Trump administration agreed to pay $3.9 billion for the planes.
Boeing initially expected to deliver the first new 747 late 2024. But problems, including a bankrupt supplier, forced the company to move delivery of the first plane to 2026, and the second to early 2027. Both deliveries have now been pushed back to 2029.
Trump is frustrated by the delays and has asked his team about the status of the planes, the Journal reported.
The current Air Force Ones are white and light blue, as has been tradition since the administration of John F. Kennedy.
In 2019, Trump said the “baby blue doesn’t suit us” and said he wanted a dark blue, white and red panel. The design was rejected after a thermal study showed that the dark blue color could emit additional heat and would require more testing.
A difficult time for Boeing
The agreement that Trump and Boeing signed in 2018 is a fixed-price agreement, which makes the aircraft manufacturer responsible for any cost overruns. Trump negotiated the deal and threatened to cancel the contract if it exceeded $3.9 billion.
The delays cost Boeing more than $2 billion and brought the total project cost to about $5.3 billion.
In 2022, then-CEO David Calhoun called the Air Force One project a “very unique set of risks that Boeing probably shouldn’t have taken.”
Boeing has faced a series of challenges in recent months.
In September, 33,000 Boeing employees went on strike. The strike lasted nearly two months and left Boeing with a backlog of about 5,400 commercial aircraft worth about $428 billion. The strike ended in early November after the aircraft manufacturer agreed to increase wages by 38% over four years. The manufacturer has also been hit by the Federal Aviation Administration’s shutdown after a series of accidents and complaints.
To recover from those losses, Boeing said Thursday it plans to spend $1 billion over the next five years to increase production of its 787 Dreamliner and meet a previous production target of 10 planes per month by 2026.
Representatives from Boeing, the U.S. Air Force and Trump’s transition team did not respond to a request for comment.
Read the original article on Business Insider
