The United States has formally accepted the Boeing 787-8 gifted from Qatar and said that it will be retrofitted and used as the new Air Force One presidential jet. The decision comes despite experts having warned that the modifications needed in order to guarantee security on board may not be ready until the end of U.S. President Donald Trump’s term in office. The issue has sparked debate in the U.S., with critics arguing that the acceptance may violate the U.S. Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which prohibits federal officials from accepting gifts from foreign governments without congressional approval.
Trump currently uses Boeing 747-200B/ VC-25A planes, which are costly to repair and generally agreed to be in need of an upgrade. The current model has served six presidents in total, from George H.W. Bush to Trump. The Trump administration put in an order for two new Boeing replacements during his first term in office in 2018, yet various delays have pushed back the expected delivery date to now 2027.
The following chart looks at the legacy of the primary U.S. presidential aircraft. The first plane that appears is the Boeing 314 Clipper, used by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1943 to fly to the Casablanca Conference. Roosevelt was the first U.S. president to fly while in office and he used the Clipper to become the first U.S. president to fly across an ocean and to visit three continents by air.
The Douglas-built VC-54C Skymaster, named “The Flying White House” or (unofficially) the “Sacred Cow” by the White House press corps, due to the high security surrounding it, was ordered by Roosevelt and later also used by Harry S. Truman. During Truman’s term in office, he signed the National Security Act of 1947 while aboard, which established the U.S. Air Force as an independent service. Between 1947–53, Truman then used the Douglas VC-118 Liftmaster, "The Independence", named after the president’s hometown of Independence, Missouri. It included a stateroom and a main cabin which seated 24 passengers, as well as improvements such as autopilot and a radar altimeter.
The term “Air Force One” was first used during the term of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was flying the Lockheed Constellation/VC-121E, nicknamed the Columbine III. The term was coined after two planes with the same call name entered the same airspace. To avoid confusion for air traffic controllers, any plane carrying the POTUS started to be called Air Force One, a term later used to describe the aircraft itself.
In 1959, Boeing delivered its Boeing 707/VC-137A to Eisenhower, followed by the Boeing 707/VC-137C in 1962, the latter of which was used until 1990 and remained in use as a backup until 1998 and was used by John F Kennedy, Lyndon B Johnson, Richard M Nixon, Gerald R Ford, James E Carter, Ronald W Reagan and George H W Bush.
Two planes of the Boeing 747-200B/ VC-25A are currently in use by President Trump. The Qatar gift plane, which has been informally called a “palace in the sky” by various media outlets for its opulence, is also a Boeing aircraft.
