Air Force One deal reached
Boeing will develop and build two planes in a $3.9-billion deal.
The White House has reached an “informal deal” with aerospace giant Boeing Co. on a contract for the next generation of presidential transport aircraft.
The $3.9-billion deal, announced Tuesday, is a fixedprice contract to develop and build two new Air Force One planes. That price includes a $600-million contract previously awarded to Chicago-based Boeing in September for preliminary design efforts, and a followon contract that has yet to be awarded for further engineering, manufacturing and development.
The Air Force One program first drew President Trump’s ire in December 2016, when he criticized the price of the 747 presidential jumbo jets, tweeting that costs were “out of control, more than $4 billion” and the order should be canceled.
A meeting with Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg later followed, in which the aerospace executive told reporters that the Air Force One planes would be built for less than $4 billion.
But on Tuesday, White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley said in a statement that the Air Force One contract would save taxpayers more than $1.4 billion “thanks to the president’s negotiations.” That would put the original cost estimates at more than $5 billion.
Gidley said in a subsequent email that the approximately $5-billion figure was based on an older estimate from the Air Force and includes economic cost adjustments.
The Air Force did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this figure. But Richard Aboulafia, aviation analyst for Teal Group, said “the reality has always been about $4 billion.”
That’s supported by a Department of Defense fiscal year 2019 budget estimate document released this month, which indicated that the Air Force One program, called the presidential aircraft recapitalization program, was expected to cost about $3.95 billion through fiscal year 2023. Since the cost to complete the program was listed as “continuing,” Aboulafia said it could be reasonable to expect costs near or a little higher than $4 billion.
The two 747-8 aircraft that will become the next Air Force Ones already exist — they were ordered in 2013 to serve a Russian airline that ceased operations two years later, as previously reported by the publication Defense One. The new planes should be in use by 2024.