President Donald Trump wanted a cheaper Air Force One, so the USAF is buying a bankrupt Russian firm’s undelivered 747s, one of which is pictured here. Woodys Aeroimages
Here Are the Jets That May Become Air Force One
The USAF has a deal in the works to turn a pair of Boeing 747 jetliners abandoned by a bankrupt Russian airline into the next presidential transport. Here’s what they look like.
Under pressure from President Donald Trump to cut the cost of the next Air Force Ones, the U.S. Air Force is finalizing a deal with Boeing to purchase two undelivered 747s in storage in the Mojave desert.
As Defense One first reported yesterday:
The 747s that will be transformed for Presidential transport were originally ordered in 2013 by Transaero, which was Russia’s second-largest airline until it went bankrupt in 2015. Boeing built two of the four jets in the order, but the airline never took ownership of them.
Typically, an airline makes a 1 percent down payment when it orders a plane, then pays the balance in installments. Transaero did not fulfill its scheduled payments, according to an industry source.
“Aeroflot absorbed most of Transaero’s existing fleet, but declined to pick up Transaero’s 747-8I orders worth $1.5 billion at list prices,” FlightGlobal reported last month.
This is one of the jets, numbered N894BA, spotted last year:
A photographer for Woodys Aeroimages spotted the pair of jets in December 2015, when Boeing temporarily put them into storage at the airfield attached to its Everett factory outside Seattle.
If the Air Force takes ownership of the planes, contractors will have to give them a state-of-the-art communications system, defensive countermeasures, and hardening to withstand an electromagnetic pulse caused by a nuclear explosion. But the service is reportedly getting a good deal on the jets themselves, which have been waiting untouched in the Mojave desert as Boeing sought another buyer.
Read the rest of the original report here.