Boeings massive cost overruns for new Air Force One reach $3 billion

Boeing announced during an earnings call Tuesday that it recently took another massive financial hit as it works to deliver two new Air Force One presidential planes.The aircraft maker reported an additional $280 million loss related to the long-delayed project — for which cost overruns now exceed $3 billion. “While the charge is disappointing, we recognize how critical schedule performance is to our customer and we are investing accordingly to maintain our commitment to deliver the airplane in 2028,” Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg said on the call. Ortberg attributed the latest loss to the company’s decision to “add significant resources to support the build and test schedule” of the two military versions of the Boeing 747, which he said would “help mitigate potential risk during certification and flight test.”Under the terms of the $3.9 billion contract President Trump inked with Boeing in 2018, the defense contractor is responsible for all cost overruns related to the project. The company’s previously reported cost overruns amounted to $2.8 billion in 2024, according to Aviation Week.Boeing initially promised that the first of the two new planes would be delivered by December 2024, but the company is “almost 3 years behind its current baseline schedule,” the Government Accountability Office noted in a report released earlier this month. The company now expects to deliver the first aircraft in “mid-2028” and the second by “mid-2029.” At the moment, the US has two old Boeing 747-200 jumbo jets for Air Force One — the designation for any airplane that the president is on — which have been in operation since the 1990s.Trump has also used a luxurious, $400 million jet donated by Qatar – dubbed the “palace in the sky” – as the presidential plane, but it was taken out of service earlier this month to boost its anti-missile defenses.Air Force One jets have to be equipped with state-of-the-art communications and defensive systems t...