New Air Force One

[Guest nsplayr]

I’m in board with kicking Boeing straight in the junk but what’s the alternative, buy an Airbus and start over with all the bespoke requirements of AF1?

Maybe we shouldn’t have allowed so much corporate consolidation and monopoly building over the last 40 years, then we would actually have other options. Boeing is too big to fail in commercial aviation, just like LM, Amazon, Google, etc. are in their industries. 

[brabus]

Therein lies the prime issue. We’ve fucked up for too long, time to rip the bandaid off and start fresh, which means there will be short term pain in a lot of ways, but as a society we’ve been way too focused on the now and barely even aware of what does 5, 10, 20 years down the road look like? As Tree said in another thread, we’ve already fucked unborn generations - it has to stop now. If we do, maybe 3-4 generations from now will be free of the financial impacts of their predecessors idiotic decisions. 

Edited February 20 by brabus

[herkbier]

Much like gun laws that we have and just need to enforce appropriately.. the primes need to be held accountable. Financially and probably criminally. 
 

The primes may have a monopoly on the product, but the US government in many ways has a monopoly on consuming the product.. time to start exercising that monopolistic power. 

[disgruntledemployee]

DOGE should just cancel it.  Trump can fly on his own plane.

[SurelySerious]

DOGE should just cancel it.  Trump can fly on his own plane.

That assumes he’ll just become dictator and be able to go for 3+ terms.

[disgruntledemployee]

On 2/21/2025 at 3:15 PM, SurelySerious said:

That assumes he’ll just become dictator and be able to go for 3+ terms.

I stand unastonished.  Not only will he take the gifted palace plane, he'll have use AF taxpayer money modify it, and he'll keep it afterwards.  I say if he's gonna keep it, he has to refund the tax $$ used to modify it.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=121680511

[Clark Griswold]

Just switch to 777

 

Not cheap, not easy but if king for a day it would be part of a 777 mil variant project, tanker/mobility, VVIP, new NECAP platforms.

[Standby]

5 minutes ago, Clark Griswold said:

Just switch to 777

 

Not cheap, not easy but if king for a day it would be part of a 777 mil variant project, tanker/mobility, VVIP, new NECAP platforms.

 

Dreamliner will do just fine. 

[Clark Griswold]

1 minute ago, Standby said:

Dreamliner will do just fine. 

Too beaucoup gi?

 

[Standby]

8 minutes ago, Clark Griswold said:

Too beaucoup gi?

 

I think so. I get the desire for the biggest and baddest. That said, I think it ultimately comes down to the engine redundancy…quads vs ETOPS. If it wasn’t for that, I think the 787 would take the cake based on higher cruise speed with comparable range. 

[StoleIt]

12 hours ago, disgruntledemployee said:

I stand unastonished.  Not only will he take the gifted palace plane, he'll have use AF taxpayer money modify it, and he'll keep it afterwards.  I say if he's gonna keep it, he has to refund the tax $$ used to modify it.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=121680511

There should be no keeping it. That is simply insane to me.

[Clark Griswold]

11 hours ago, Standby said:

I think so. I get the desire for the biggest and baddest. That said, I think it ultimately comes down to the engine redundancy…quads vs ETOPS. If it wasn’t for that, I think the 787 would take the cake based on higher cruise speed with comparable range. 

Yeah, for the survivability and other requirements i don’t know of exactly I can see the quad being preferable, might not be required but as 747s are available here we go…

Split the mission double the bill and make several CODELs happy 😉

747s for overseas and 787s for domestic / near abroad 

[StoleIt]

3 minutes ago, Clark Griswold said:

Yeah, for the survivability and other requirements i don’t know of exactly I can see the quad being preferable, might not be required but as 747s are available here we go…

Split the mission double the bill and make several CODELs happy 😉

747s for overseas and 787s for domestic / near abroad 

At the bro level, we have been talking a lot about what could replace the C-40 and C-32 as they start to get long in the tooth. Apparently, Boeing originally had an idea for a 787-300 that the Japanese wanted for short dense inter-island flying and it would have been the basis for the 787 BBJ as well.

The real big issue is the foot print of a 787, be it a fictional -3 or a real -8/9/10, is way bigger than a 757 or 737. We are talking an extra 70 feet of wing let alone PCN issues. Airport flexibility goes way down, hell, we already sank a C-32 into the pavement at MDW because of a PCN being wrong in the Giant. A 787 wouldn't even be able to land at MDW, let alone park.

I fear the MAX9 or 10 is really the only replacement for the C-32 and it simplifies crewing because it's a shared type. But it will come with a performance and capability hit. Best to bring it online right as we change administrations so there isn't any growing pain...like that'll ever happen.