Eric Lipton is an investigative reporter. Tyler Pager and Maggie Haberman cover the White House.
July 25, 2026
Since 2023, the Federal Aviation Administration has warned the cracks create an “unsafe condition” that “could adversely affect the structural integrity of the airplane.” It ordered owners of 747-8 planes to inspect for such cracks and repair any.
Multiple reports filed with the F.A.A. and Air Force audits detail the expensive and time-consuming efforts to find and fix the cracks in the planes that it is building to serve as Air Force One jets. Some only became apparent when the planes were stripped down to their frames.
Referring to the Qatari-donated plane, the White House official said the aircraft will have those efforts completed as required by the F.A.A., although it did not say if such fixes had been made. L3Harris did not respond to requests for comment.
The plane has another complication: sideways-facing seats. An F.A.A. safety rule mandates that planes with unusual seat arrangements perform special checks with crash-test dummies to ensure that passengers would not be injured during emergency landings.
Documents obtained by The Times show that a subcontractor working on the plane filed paperwork seeking a “special condition” approval from the F.A.A. allowing it to fly.
On July 1, the first day that Mr. Trump was traveling on the new Air Force One, the F.A.A. published a public notice that the request had been approved days earlier.
Similar approvals have been granted for other Boeing 747-8 planes used as luxury carriers. But Sandy Murdock, a former F.A.A. chief counsel, said the approval appeared to be granted just in time for Mr. Trump to fly on the plane.
The White House official said the Air Force had worked with the F.A.A. to ensure that “all Air Force aircraft are safe to fly and operate.”
The rushed process also led to costs far beyond the roughly $400 million in taxpayer money that the Air Force estimated would be spent to retrofit the jet.
During that process, the Air Force had to accelerate training for its pilots, as the 747-8 has a different cockpit than the old jets. To do so, the Air Force leased an Atlas Air cargo 747-8 jet from October until February, a plane that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, to use for “interim pilot qualification training,” records show. The Air Force did not disclose how much it paid for the lease.
Given the tight deadline, the Air Force then moved in December to buy yet another 747-8, this one from Lufthansa to serve as a “dedicated trainer aircraft for aircrew” so that the Pentagon had “immediate operational readiness,” the Air Force said in a statement. It also purchased a second one to supply spare parts. The total cost for both: another $400 million, an Air Force official said.
Both jets will be useful once the new Boeing Air Force One planes are in service. But the need to acquire them so quickly was driven by the arrival of the Qatari jet, the Air Force has said.
The administration has declined to say how the overall project has been financed. But Air Force Secretary Troy E. Meink acknowledged in Senate testimony that the government was using funds from a nuclear modernization program called Sentinel. Last summer, $934 million was transferred from that program to an unnamed classified project, as The Times previously reported.
Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, has repeatedly pressed Trump administration officials for information about the costs and security systems of the temporary Air Force One. He said the funding maneuver was an effort to avoid scrutiny.
“We routinely discuss the cost of the existing Air Force One modifications,” Mr. Murphy said. “But they have declared this work to be a national security secret that cannot be divulged even to appropriators. That is absolutely unacceptable.”
A Security Threat
This spring, Mr. Trump’s dream plane finally took to the air again.
At 2:36 p.m. on April 16, just eight months after work began on the jet, it began flying in circles around Texas and Louisiana. Six more test flights followed that month.
By May 1, the Air Force was ready to declare a victory of sorts. “VC-25B Bridge aircraft has officially completed modification and flight testing and is being painted,” the Air Force said in a statement, referring to the formal military name for the retrofitted Qatari jet.
But military officials also acknowledged that they went without certain elements. Overall, the Air Force said, “no risk was taken in security, safety or mission communications, but the collective team made trades on some of the less commonly used mission sets,” without providing details.
The plane was moved to a warehouse to be painted. Rather than using the trademark robin’s egg blue and white design commissioned in 1962 by President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy, Mr. Trump wanted a color scheme of red, white, gold and dark blue.
“The baby blue doesn’t fit with us,” he told Fox News.
The Air Force had previously rejected this change pushed by Mr. Trump in his first term, concluding that the darker color “added heat in certain environments” and potentially could disrupt sensitive electronic components installed in the lower part of the plane.
But Mr. Trump overrode those objections. He had been showing off a model Air Force One with the new paint scheme for years, both at his Mar-a-Lago club and even at one of his 2025 inaugural balls.
Mr. Trump was effusive last month as he looked over the retrofitted plane, parked inside a hanger at a military base in Maryland.
Standing below his new jet, the president took out one of his Sharpies and signed his name on a mechanical panel on its belly, while the song “Y.M.C.A.,” a Trump rally anthem, blasted on speakers.
“This is a plane that the United States of America should have,” Mr. Trump said July 1 as he prepared to board to take it on a debut flight to North Dakota.
Days later, he flew the new Air Force One to Turkey to attend a NATO meeting.
While he was in Ankara, the United States resumed airstrikes on the neighboring country of Iran. The war was just 1,000 miles away from the president.
Early in the morning of July 8, a military official shared bad news with Mr. Trump, who was in his suite at the JW Marriott, according to a person familiar with the situation. U.S. officials judged there to be a credible threat that Iranian proxy forces were targeting him. The Secret Service wanted to change the plans for his departure.
That morning, Mr. Trump announced that the Qatari-donated plane would
fly ahead to Mildenhall Air Force Base in the United Kingdom so U.S. service members could see it.
The president, who would later get back on the Qatari jet in England, made no mention of the security threat when he announced the change on Truth Social.
For his part, Mr. Trump would fly out of Ankara on the old Air Force One, he wrote, “for old time’s sake.”
Julian E. Barnes, Eric Schmitt, Greg Kendall-Ball and Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting.
Eric Lipton is a Times investigative reporter, who digs into a broad range of topics from Pentagon spending to toxic chemicals.
Tyler Pager is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent for The Times, reporting on President Trump.
A version of this article appears in print on July 26, 2026, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Inside Trump’s Push to Get New Air Force One Aloft.
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