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Former President Donald Trump is “absolutely” interested in scrapping Air Force One’s historic blue and white color palette if he is re-elected.
A former senior Trump White House official told Politico. that Trump was “100 percent” planning to make the change if he beats Kamala Harris in November.
Trump reportedly wants to change the famed plane’s colors to red, white and dark blue, resembling his current private Boeing 757.
The Air Force is working with Boeing on two planes to replace existing aircraft, which are due to be delivered in 2026 and 2027. The new planes will have a light blue and white design, which has been a constant since President John F Kennedy’s administration.
If elected, however, Trump will still have time to switch the colors of the planes, which he ordered during his time in office. Boeing signed a $3.9bn contract in 2018 to replace the 747-8s planes with 747-200B, a model that has been flying since the 1990s.
Dave Calhoun, Boeing’s CEO, told investors that company executives should never have agreed to the government’s terms for the Air Force One deal. According to Politico, the company had agreed to a fixed-price contract, meaning that all changes made to the airplane would come out of Boeing’s pocket.
The project is currently $2bn over budget, part of which is due to problems stemming from when a subcontractor who was hired to furnish the cabin interior went bankrupt and caused the company to switch supplies.
Plus, Boeing has dealt with challenges including labor shortages and a lack of employees with clearances to work on the planes.
The Independent has contacted Trump’s campaign for comment.
In office, Trump bragged about getting the cost of the project down from $4.2bn. He bragged about the plane’s design to foreign dignitaries and showed off a model of his inspired aircraft in the Oval Office.
“The model was on the coffee table in the Oval Office and he pointed it out many times to foreign and domestic visitors,” the aide said. “He thought it represented America more and represented strength, the red, white and blue.”
The colors, particularly the dark blue, would lead to expensive design fixes and logistic issues, the outlet reported.
Boeing has found that the dark blue paint on the bottom of the plane would create excessive temperatures, causing the company to modify the plane to cool some of its components, which Boeing would need to pay out of pocket to fix.
If Trump is reelected, changing the color scheme at this point would cost millions in cost overruns and added delays.
In a statement to Politico on Trump’s intentions for Air Force One, Trump’s campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said it “Sounds like Joe Biden hates the Red, White and Blue.”
The spokesperson did not directly answer a question about whether Trump would change the colors.
