For Globetrotting Presidents, Air Force One Provides Perfect Ride

14 March 2011

President Obama arrives at Benito Juárez International Airport in Mexico City, April 16, 2009.

President Obama aboard Air Force One, July 2, 2010

By Christopher Connell
Special Correspondent

It is unquestionably the most exclusive ride in the world: the gleaming, blue-and-white jumbo jet that answers to the call signal Air Force One.

It’s an American icon, as recognizable as the Statue of Liberty or the Grand Canyon — the airplane that will take President Obama on his second journey to Latin America March 19.

The first stop for the president, first lady Michelle Obama and the White House retinue will be Brazil, which was also a stop on the first flight ever taken by a U.S. president, a secret wartime journey by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in January 1943 to confer with Winston Churchill and other Allied leaders in Casablanca, Morocco. That trip took three days in a Boeing 314 known as the Flying Boat, which ferried Roosevelt from Miami to Belem, Brazil, before the long trip across the Atlantic.

Today, U.S. presidents roam the world in a pair of Boeing 747-200B wide-bodied aircraft (VC-25s in military parlance) built during President Ronald Reagan’s second term and first ridden by President George H.W. Bush on September 6, 1990, for a routine trip to Topeka, Kansas, and Tallahassee, Florida. Bush was back on board the next night, flying to Helsinki, Finland, with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

The two jumbos are interchangeable. The second flies backup on presidential missions, usually landing at an airport nearby so as not to confuse onlookers gathered to greet the president. (The president’s plane was first designated Air Force One in the 1950s, after air controllers briefly confused President Dwight Eisenhower’s Lockheed Constellation with a commercial airliner.)

In fact, any military plane with the president aboard is called Air Force One, but it is the gleaming jumbo that has captured the fancy of Hollywood scriptwriters. No, there isn’t an escape pod or a parachute ramp. But the aluminum skin is fortified to withstand the electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear explosion and is equipped with advanced secure communications equipment, allowing it to function as a mobile command center in the event of an attack on the United States. The plane is capable of refueling midair, though that never has been done, according to retired Colonel Mark Tillman, a former longtime pilot of Air Force One.

The jumbo is 231 feet (70.4 meters) long, with a 195-foot (59.4-meter) wingspan and a tail rudder that stands six stories high. It has nearly 240 miles (386 kilometers) of cables and wires, twice as much as a commercial 747 jetliner.

Its blue-and-white color scheme first appeared on a long-range Boeing 707 built for President John Kennedy in 1962. Jacqueline Kennedy enlisted industrial designer Raymond Loewy, who had designed the Studebaker Avanti and the Lucky Strikes cigarette logo, to create the classic look: “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” in black against white on the upper fuselage, Caribbean blue around the windows and over the cockpit, powder blue below, the presidential seal near the forward door and the American flag on the rudder.

Mechanics of the Air Force’s 89^th Military Airlift Wing at a facility 10 miles from the White House maintain the jumbos. The planes, like their flying records, are spotless, hand-waxed at least once a week inside a tightly guarded hangar. “Every time it lands, the maintenance guys will take Windex and cotton and wipe off their section of the plane,” said Tillman.

Tillman flew President George W. Bush from Tallahassee, Florida, to Air Force bases in Louisiana and Nebraska on September 11, 2001, when it was uncertain whether terrorists who struck the World Trade Center and Pentagon would unleash further attacks. Tillman also made the lights-out, nighttime landing in Baghdad, Iraq, ferrying Bush to Thanksgiving dinner with troops in 2003, one of 1,675 trips Bush made as president.

Obama has flown 343 times during his first 26 months in office.

The president’s suite occupies the nose of Air Force One. It has two couches that fold into twin beds, and a separate dressing room, lavatory and shower, and a spacious office. There is a medical facility with a foldout operating table and a closetful of medicines. Beyond that, there are another conference room and seating compartments for staff, guests, Secret Service agents and the news media. There are six lavatories and two galleys. The plane carries 76 passengers, who can watch movies, make calls or access the Internet from their seats.

Frequent fliers in the press corps say the food is good, but not gourmet; the White House chef does not travel with the president. But they say the service by attentive Air Force stewards is great.

When Obama travels, Air Force cargo planes ferry the presidential limousines, Secret Service vans and, if needed, a dismantled Marine One helicopter ahead of time to meet the president upon arrival.

The Air Force plans to replace the two jumbos now best-known as Air Force One in 2017. Any new presidential plane has a lot to live up to. Jack Valenti, aide to President Lyndon B. Johnson, once said Air Force One is “worth 10,000 votes” every time it lands.

Tillman, the former Air Force One pilot, who now runs a corporate flight department in Arizona, said flying Air Force One always brought a thrill. “It’s a tremendous feeling,” he said. “The motorcade pulls up, and the greatest living man in the free world comes walking up your stairs, and now he’s yours. It’s your responsibility to keep him safe.”