Boeing disclosed Tuesday on its earnings call that it has absorbed another substantial financial setback tied to its effort to build and deliver two new Air Force One presidential aircraft.
The aerospace giant said it recorded an additional $280 million loss on the long-delayed program, pushing total cost overruns on the project past $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 during the call.
Ortberg said the latest charge stems from Boeing’s move to “add significant resources to support the build and test schedule” for the two military versions of the Boeing 747. He said the added investment is intended to “help mitigate potential risk during certification and flight test.”
The financial burden falls on Boeing under the $3.9 billion contract President Trump signed with the company in 2018, which makes the defense contractor responsible for any cost overruns associated with the Air Force One replacement program.
Before the latest charge, Boeing’s reported cost overruns on the program had reached $2.8 billion in 2024, Aviation Week reported.
Boeing had originally pledged to deliver the first of the two new presidential jets by December 2024. But the program is now “almost 3 years behind its current baseline schedule,” the Government Accountability Office said in a report released earlier this month.
The company’s current timeline calls for the first aircraft to be delivered in “mid-2028,” followed by the second in “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 to protect the commander-in-chief, which makes their development expensive and complicated.
Trump has long complained about Boeing’s cost overruns and delays for the new Air Force Ones.
The White House did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
