Musk to speed up construction of new Air Force One aircraft

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• Tech billionaire Elon Musk is to speed up the construction of the next Air Force One.
• Originally, two presidential aircraft ordered were to be delivered in 2024, but the timeframe has been pushed back to at least 2027.
• It is questionable whether any aircraft will be completed during Trump's term of office.

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"The president wants the planes faster," said Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg on US broadcaster CNBC. That is why the company is working with Musk and his team to shorten the schedule.

Musk became a confidant of Trump during the election campaign for the White House and is now tasked with cutting government spending. He recently paid a visit to Boeing. Among other things, Musk's team is looking at the requirements that are slowing down the project, Ortberg said.

Presidential aircraft from the 90s

Two converted Boeing 747s, which were commissioned by President Ronald Reagan (President until 1989) and put into service in the early 1990s, are currently being used as Air Force One.

Trump ordered two new aircraft during his first term of office in 2019. He later often bragged to supporters that he had negotiated Boeing down by a billion dollars. At the same time, the aircraft manufacturer entered into a deal with a fixed price of around four billion dollars and undertook to bear any additional costs incurred. In the meantime, the aircraft have already cost Boeing over two billion dollars more than planned.

New look for Air Force One

Trump originally wanted to give the new presidential aircraft a different look. Since the 1960s, the planes have had a striking design in the colors white and light blue. Trump, however, ordered aircraft with a dark blue underside, a red stripe in the middle and a white top.

Under US President Joe Biden, Trump's plans for a new design for Air Force One were scrapped.

Archivbild: sda

Under President Joe Biden, the color scheme was changed back to the classic design. The reason given at the time was that the dark blue would cause some components to heat up more and this would have required additional technical tests.

Musk is actually a Boeing rival

Boeing and SpaceX, the space company run by Musk, are direct competitors: Both build spaceships. While SpaceX's capsules are regularly on the move, Boeing experienced an embarrassment during the first flight of its Starliner with humans on board last year. Following problems, it was decided that the astronauts should stay on the International Space Station (ISS) and the Boeing capsule returned to Earth empty. It landed without any problems.