Trump shows off new Air Force One design and says there are ‘a couple of secrets’ in it as Democrats threaten to block him from changing Jackie Kennedy color scheme
- New Air Force One jets are due in 2024 and Trump wants a different paint job
- He showed off a red, white and blue color scheme in the Oval Office
- It would replace the 57-year-old livery that Jackie Kennedy dreamed up with an industrial designer the year before her husband was assassinated
- That design didn’t include any red, the color of the Republican Party
- Democrats in Congress are trying to hamstring Trump’s ability to micromanage the details
- His favored colors look more like his own private plane than like the current presidential aircraft
President Donald Trump revealed his design this week for a new Air Force One, showing off a set of drawings in the Oval Office that replace the Kennedy-era light blue paint job with a more masculine red, white and black.
The current livery is dominated by blue, the color of the Democratic Party. Trump’s re-do has splashes of Republican red.
The result resembles the color scheme of Trump’s personal Boeing 757, which 2016 campaign crowds called ‘Trump Force One.’
‘We had different choices, here,’ Trump told ABC News, saying that he had come up with the design concepts himself. Artists’ renderings show variations in the color of the engines and the depth of the underbelly’s dark tones.
The $3.9 billion pair of Boeing 747s that will replace the current presidential planes – there’s always a backup – won’t be ready for flight until at least 2024, making it unlikely Trump will ever get to fly on them as president.
‘I’m doing that for other presidents,’ he said. ‘Not for me.’
‘Air Force One’ isn’t really a specific plane. It’s the radio call sign of any aircraft the President of the United States is aboard.
But the name has become shorthand of the specific jumbo jet that attracts attention and photographers wherever it lands.
The president announced 11 months ago that he would order Boeing to give its next generation a face-lift when it swaps the 747-200B series for a pair of 747-800 planes.
‘It’s a 747, but you know, it’s a much bigger plane,’ Trump said in an interview broadcast Thursday. ‘It’s a much bigger wing span.’
While the president claims to have muscled Boeing into dropping $1.6 billion from the project’s price tag, members of Congress are objecting to how much control he has over its look and feel.
In a hearing of the Democrat-run House Armed Services Committee, Democratic Rep. Joe Courtney of Connecticut prodded his colleagues into restricting how much money can be spent on visual renovations.
‘The president will have an opportunity to make some suggestions and changes to the plane,’ he said as he introduced an amendment to the spending bill that funds the Boeing contract.
‘Additional paint can add weight to the plane,’ he said, and ‘additional fixtures inside can also add to cost and delays to the delivery of the plane.’
Republican Rep. Bradley Byrne of Alabama shot back: that the move ‘looks like an attempt to just poke at the president.’
‘Prior to 2017, I don’t recall attempts to block things like paint colors,’ he said.
California Democratic Rep. John Garamendi said in the hearing that Air Force One is ‘a representation of the power of the United States, the power of the president.’
‘If someone wants to change its appearance, its scheme, then we ought to have a say in that.’
The last Air Force One reboot came during John F. Kennedy’s presidency when industrial designer Raymond Loewy worked with first lady Jackie Kennedy on a sky blue and cyan motif.
That design stayed when the planes President Trump flies on were placed into service in 1990.
Seven years later the plane entered the slipstream of entertainment news with the introduction of ‘Air Force One,’ a Hollywood blockbuster starring Harrison Ford as a president who fights off terrorists in the air.
In the film, the president escapes a crashing-and-burning plane in a one-man escape pod.
‘Everyone wants to know, is there a pod or not?’ ABC asked Trump. ‘Seen the movie “Air Force One”? … The famous pod that flies out of the back?’
‘Oh, I see,’ Trump chuckled.
‘But, yeah – no.’