Air Force One: A Timeline of Presidential Planes

Few presidential perks surpass the prestige and luxury of Air Force One. Without worries about lost luggage, baggage fees or cramped middle seats, the American president travels the globe in unparalleled comfort.

Equipped with state-of-the art communication and security systems, the “flying White House” allows presidents to govern from 40,000 feet. While Air Force One is technically the air traffic control designation for any U.S. Air Force aircraft carrying the commander-in-chief, it is closely associated with the pair of jumbo jets that have become American icons.

“Air Force One is a symbol of the projection of American power, an individual president’s character and personality and America's technological prowess,” says Kenneth T. Walsh, author of Air Force One: A History of the Presidents and Their Planes. Here’s a look at how presidential aircraft have evolved over the years.

No fanfare accompanied Franklin D. Roosevelt when he became the first sitting president to travel by airplane. In fact, his flight to the Casablanca Conference to plot Allied war strategy with Winston Churchill was kept secret for weeks.

With German U-boats prowling the Atlantic Ocean, presidential advisors decided that Roosevelt would be safer taking to the skies to travel to Morocco. Bypassing an actual boat for a flying boat, the president departed Miami’s Biscayne Bay on January 11, 1943, on board a propeller-driven Boeing 314 Clipper that was the world’s largest commercial aircraft at the time.

Leased by the U.S. Navy but manned by a civilian Pan American Airways crew, the Dixie Clipper made refueling and rest stops in Trinidad, Brazil and Gambia before Roosevelt flew the final leg of the more than 50-hour, 7,000-mile journey in a Douglas C-54 military transport. If today’s Air Force One compares to a first-class hotel, the Dixie Clipper was a bare-bones roadside motel. Since the plane’s cabin wasn’t pressurized, the Dixie Clipper carried oxygen cylinders in case of emergency and flew below 10,000 feet, which made for a particularly turbulent ride across the Atlantic for the partially paralyzed president, who was unable to use his legs to brace himself. “It was very noisy and very uncomfortable by today’s standards—or even the standards at the time—for Roosevelt, but he decided that he needed to make the arduous trip,” Walsh says.

The first aircraft built specifically for presidential transport, the Douglas VC-54C Skymaster was nicknamed the “Sacred Cow” due to the extensive security measures that accompanied it. The four-engine propeller plane with a range of nearly 4,000 miles and a maximum speed of 300 miles per hour featured a private stateroom with a large desk, private lavatory, bulletproof picture window and fold-down bed.

The Sacred Cow boasted a battery-operated, retractable elevator in its belly that lifted the wheelchair-bound Roosevelt on and off the plane. Roosevelt’s lone trip on the Sacred Cow occurred during his journey to the Yalta Conference. His successor, Harry S. Truman, became the first president to routinely take to the skies.

When rapid aviation advances made the Sacred Cow obsolete, a new four-engine Douglas VC-118 replaced it. Named Independence in honor of Truman’s Missouri hometown, the military version of the Douglas DC-6 airliner could fly nonstop anywhere in the continental United States without refueling.

The aircraft’s state-of-the-art cabin pressurization system allowed it to fly higher over bad weather, and an experimental weather radar in the nose could detect storms 30 miles ahead. A radio teletype transmission system sent and received messages across 3,000 miles, and a television was installed in Truman's quarters in 1952.

There was no mistaking Independence. Truman had it painted to resemble a stylized American eagle with a white beak on the nose and blue feathers along the fuselage and vertical stabilizer. “It was a gaudy airplane, more likely to be mistaken for a flying circus than a 'flying White House,’” quipped Colonel Ralph Albertazzie, a former Air Force One pilot for President Richard Nixon and co-author of The Flying White House: The Story of Air Force One.

Dwight Eisenhower rejected the cartoonish Independence in favor of no-nonsense military airplanes that included two Lockheed Constellations and two smaller, two-engine Aero Commanders that he occasionally flew himself. The presidential suite aboard Columbine II, a four-propeller Lockheed VC-121A Constellation, featured two sofa beds, a large conference table and a navigational panel Eisenhower used to track his plane’s journey.

Columbine II was the first presidential aircraft to use the Air Force One designation. Following an incident in which Eisenhower’s aircraft (designated as Air Force 8610) entered the same airspace with a commercial flight with the same call sign, Eastern Airlines 8610, the presidential aircraft was given its unique signal of Air Force One to prevent any confusion that could have deadly consequences.

Christened in 1954, the Columbine III was 18 feet longer than its predecessor and possessed more powerful engines and higher speeds. The stateroom in the military version of the Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation commercial airliner featured two-way radio telephones, electric typewriters, teletype machines and the capability to remain in contact with air defense command radar stations.

As aviation entered the Jet Age, the propeller-driven Air Force One looked as antiquated as a Model T at a Formula 1 race, which had international implications during the Cold War. “The Americans were arriving in prop planes while the Soviets were arriving in jets,” Walsh says, “so it looked like the United States was behind in the technology race.”

Secretary of State John Foster Dulles convinced Eisenhower to jettison Columbine III for an upgraded ride. The president commissioned three military versions of the Boeing 707-120 commercial jet. The first jet, Special Air Mission (SAM) 970, was delivered in 1959, followed shortly by SAM 971 and SAM 972. It featured a special safe to store the nuclear codes, a special communications section and a cabin with swivel chairs, film projectors and divans that converted to beds.

With a maximum speed of 590 miles per hour, the VC-137A jets (the VIP variant of the 707 used for Air Force One) could cover more than twice the distance in the same amount of time as Columbine III. Eisenhower was won over by the jet’s “silent, effortless acceleration and its rapid rate of climb,” and the added speed permitted presidents to jet-set to more countries around the world.

The jets ordered by Eisenhower sported a military aesthetic with metallic skins, garish bright orange colors for safety purposes and the words “Military Air Transport Service” and “United States Air Force” emblazoned on the sides.

Before a Boeing VC-137C airliner with tail number SAM 26000 entered service in October 1962, John F. Kennedy commissioned First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and industrial designer Raymond Loewy, creator of iconic designs such as the Coca-Cola bottle and U.S. Postal Service emblem, to develop a new Air Force One livery. The result was the iconic color scheme of white, silver, two shades of blue and the bold “United States of America” fuselage lettering in a Caslon typeface similar to that used for the first printed broadsides of the Declaration of Independence.

With a maximum speed of 600 miles per hour and range of 6,000 miles, the modified commercial 707-320B airliner was the first presidential aircraft with secure, rather than open, channels. Jackie Kennedy also decorated the interior with oil paintings and fine china. When Lyndon B. Johnson flew on SAM 26000 (where he famously took the oath of office), he added personal touches such as a doggie door for the conference room and a giant leather chair, dubbed the “throne” by aides, that ascended to a higher elevation with a push of a button.

In 1972, another Boeing VC-137C with the tail number SAM 27000 replaced SAM 26000 as the primary presidential aircraft.

The two Boeing VC-25A jumbo jets that began service as Air Force One in 1990 and 1991 remain in use today. Derided by some critics as a “flying Taj Mahal,” the six-story-tall aircraft arrived two years late and $365 million over budget, partly due to its elaborate security features.

Capable of mid-air refueling, the military versions of the Boeing 747-200B with tail codes SAM 28000 and SAM 29000 have special skins designed to harden the plane against electromagnetic pulses from a nuclear blast or direct attack that could knock out communications and navigational systems. A highly classified system of defensive countermeasures can jam radars and evade heat-seeking missiles.

Similar to the White House, Air Force One has its own situation room with secure telephone and computer communications. A private presidential suite includes a small gym, bathroom with shower and sleeping quarters. To save the president in the case of a medical emergency, an office can be converted into an operating room, and the airplane carries a blood supply and stocked pharmacy.

In 2015, the U.S. Air Force announced the Boeing 747-8 as the basis for the next Air Force One iterations, with delivery initially set for 2018. However, prolonged delays, rising costs and numerous redesigns have plagued production of the VC-25B planes, and the jets have yet to be completed.