January 21, 2026
That is Air Force One back on the tarmac at Andrews air force base.
By now that plane carrying President Trump was supposed to be well on its way to Davos Switzerland so Trump could deliver a huge speech tomorrow morning at the World Economic Forum. But shortly after takeoff Air Force One had an electrical issue and to be safe the decision was made to turn the plane around. Go back to Andrews Airforce base, transfer everyone onto another plane and then make the 8 to 9 hour trip.
A few things – first of all this type of break down has happened before. It doesn’t happen often because Air Force One is the best maintained plane in the world. But it has happened. And obviously the safety of the president of the United States and the entire plane full of people on board with him comes first.
But on the optics side – a very public break down of Air Force One is not the vibe Trump was going for as he’s hours away from telling world leaders and all the billionaire heads of global companies assembled in Davos that the United States must own Greenland for national security reasons and telling those world leaders how they can learn a thing or two from Trump about how to make their countries as “hot” as Trump has made the United States. That’s exactly what Trump previewed his speech would be about. But having your plane break down doesn’t give those vibes.
On top of that – I’m sure we’re going to start hearing all over again about the need for Trump to have a new plane. This was a huge deal when he came back into office. Remember the Qataris gave him that luxury jet? Yeah – happened and it’s apparently being retrofitted as a new Air Force One – though there is no transparency into how much that retrofitting is going to cost American taxpayers.
And don’t forget however many hundreds of millions of dollars or maybe a billion dollars of taxpayers spend on that Qatari jet – US taxpayers are also on the hook for two new Boeing 747s that will be transformed into Air Force One. In 2018 that purchase price was almost $4 billion. These Boeing jets have been delayed for years – but according to the Air Force – the first of those planes are scheduled to be delivered by mid-2028.
