Air Force One is far more than a cool gadget or political flashpoint

Air Force One was once a high-flying image of American know-how, ingenuity and energy. For many, it was additionally a supply of nationwide pleasure.

The present Boeing 747s that function Air Force One are a mixture transport car, command middle, press room, medical middle and residence, full with bed room and workplace for the nation’s chief government.

Now, to many, Air Force One has turn out to be scandalous.

On July 8, 2026, The New York Times reported that the most recent model of the presidential plane – offered by Qatar as a present to President Donald Trump – lacks the subtle countermeasures that had been a prepared protection for the 747s that had been in service since 1990. Critics instantly revived earlier claims that the brand new 747 was a corrupt transaction from the beginning. Trump later mentioned the aircraft could be despatched to be “maxed out” with upgrades.

This article isn’t a part of that story. Nor is it the usual story of Air Force One that seems in quite a few documentaries, which are typically gee-whiz accounts of the wonderful capacities of the president’s airplane.

I’m a historian writing a guide in regards to the applied sciences which have formed the lengthy historical past of the American presidency, by which Air Force One looms massive. I imagine it is very important see Air Force One as greater than a cool gadget or political flash level. Von Hardesty, a curator on the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, definitely understood this when he wrote that “by the end of the 20th century, Air Force One had evolved into an essential arm of the American Presidency.”

Put merely, the presidency as we all know it in the present day would have been unimaginable with out Air Force One, which has formed and outlined that function for many years.

Horse-drawn carriage to the ‘Sacred Cow’

It was solely lately that Americans or their presidents may think about issues this fashion. When presidents left the capital all through a lot of the nation’s historical past, it was a prolonged, at instances arduous, course of that severed their reference to authorities workplaces.

As a end result, presidents hardly ever traveled whereas in workplace and had been extra more likely to depart Washington for prolonged holidays than for official enterprise. Likewise, no serving president left the United States till Teddy Roosevelt visited the development of the Panama Canal in 1906. Woodrow Wilson grew to become the primary sitting president to cross the Atlantic when he boarded the USS George Washington in 1918 to affix the negotiations in Versailles on the finish of World War I.

If few presidents received away from Washington to see the nation and its residents earlier than 1900, the flip aspect was additionally true: Few Americans noticed presidential candidates or incumbents in individual, particularly Americans who lived exterior the jap third of the United States. Instead, the connection between presidents and common residents was mediated via political events, the press and ultimately via broadcast media.

The first designated presidential plane arrived in 1933, however Franklin Roosevelt by no means flew on it. His first flight as president got here in 1943, when American Airlines loaned a flying boat known as the Dixie Clipper to ferry Roosevelt to satisfy with different Allied leaders on the Casablanca Conference. In 1945, Roosevelt traveled to Yalta on a Douglas VC-54C known as the Sacred Cow, the primary aircraft particularly constructed for presidential journey.

Despite these flights to necessary worldwide conferences, Roosevelt and successors Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower made restricted home use of plane, preferring as a substitute to journey by railroad. International journeys remained prolonged journeys in loud, propeller-driven plane that encountered the larger turbulence of decrease altitudes.

All this modified in 1962, when President John Kennedy acquired a brand-new Boeing 707, the primary jet-powered Air Force One.

Presidential ubiquity

Flying larger, sooner and quieter than their predecessors, the jet plane used for Air Force One made attainable one of many central sides of the trendy presidency: The nation’s chief government might be a ubiquitous participant in nationwide politics and world affairs.

Presidential journey elevated dramatically, each in its frequency and within the variety of stops on every journey. This was not merely the results of the rising use of air journey worldwide. Where Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower understood world management as their potential to coordinate American energy from Washington, Kennedy and his successors sought to make themselves the middle of the story.

This appeared notably necessary through the Cold War. As the United States asserted its management within the wrestle in opposition to the Soviet Union, American presidents positioned themselves because the symbols of freedom in opposition to communism.

Consider President Richard Nixon touring to China in 1972 to normalize relations, or Ronald Reagan flying to Iceland for the 1986 Reykjavík convention with Soviet chief Mikhail Gorbachev to barter the way forward for intermediate-range nuclear missiles. The presence of a president at these conferences elevated each the significance of the occasion and the picture of the president as a statesman who was capable of rapidly pivot forwards and backwards from nationwide to worldwide management.

As American presidents struggled to take care of their energy and their relevance after the top of the Cold War, their worldwide journey solely elevated. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama every revamped twice the variety of worldwide journeys as Ronald Reagan did.

These journeys ranged from goodwill visits to take care of outdated alliances to makes an attempt to construct new connections after the collapse of the Soviet empire.

Presidents particularly visited worldwide scorching spots, positioning themselves as international peacemakers. The sight of the American president descending the lengthy stairs from Air Force One, smiling and waving alongside the way in which, grew to become a logo of American diplomacy.

Official enterprise – and campaigning

If Air Force One enabled presidents to announce themselves as statesmen overseas, it additionally revolutionized politics at residence.

During the Nineteen Seventies, the 2 main events moved from deciding on their nominees at nationwide conventions to a system the place state primaries determined who would lead the ticket.

This change emerged from calls for that political energy transfer from occasion leaders to occasion members. But a major system would have been unimaginable with out plane to shuttle candidates across the nation. That was notably necessary for incumbents, as air journey enabled them to be each sitting presidents and energetic candidates.

Presidents and their handlers discovered the right way to mix official authorities enterprise, which permitted the usage of Air Force One, with marketing campaign alternatives. These moments not solely modified how presidents operated; they modified how Americans understood their presidents.

This change started with Kennedy’s use of the jet-powered Air Force One for home journey, together with the tragic determination to go to Texas in November 1963, the place he was assassinated. In simply his first yr in workplace, Bill Clinton visited 37 states over the course of 73 days.

Air Force One is a logo of presidential energy, however its issues solely reinforce the truth that know-how shapes the presidency.

The clearest demonstration was on 9/11. President Bush was in Florida that morning. Air Force One whisked him into the air, delivering him first to the security of an Air Force base in Louisiana after which to the fortified headquarters of the U.S. Strategic Command in Nebraska, and nonetheless had him again on the White House by the top of the day.

It was a grim reminder of the opposite process for Air Force One: a protected transport for the president throughout a nationwide disaster or nuclear armageddon. While the plane fulfilled its promise to maintain the president protected in a disaster, its legendary communication methods faltered. Crucially, Bush struggled to coordinate with senior officers in Washington, leaving him momentarily out of the loop at a terrifying historic juncture.

The function that presidents have assumed at residence and overseas, in addition to the methods Americans work together with their presidents, have taken type throught the chances – and the constraints – of presidential plane. Air Force One is not only a good way to journey or a nifty gadget, neither is it peripheral to the presidency. It is central to it.