Trump’s designs for Air Force One echo TWA, US Airways, Obama’s charter and other planes of the past

By Alexandra Skores, CNN

Washington (CNN) — If you think President Donald Trump’s designs for the paint job on the new aircraft that will serve as Air Force One look familiar, you are not alone.

Last month, the Air Force confirmed the 747-800s currently being modified will wear a red, white, gold and dark blue livery nearly identical to the one proposed during Trump’s first term in office. One key difference is the newest designs have a billowing flag on the tail.

Trump’s plans for Air Force One were previously reversed by the Biden administration, which announced they wanted to paint the planes blue and white, very similar to the robin’s egg blue and white color scheme presidential transports have worn since the Kennedy administration.

The planes were not painted before Biden left office and after his inauguration Trump resurrected his chosen paint scheme. It will be applied to two new Boeing 747-800s being modified by Boeing and another Boeing 747-800 donated to the US military by Qatar. When complete, the Air Force will operate the completed planes as part of their VC-25B program.

Red, white and blue colors may not feel all that surprising for an American presidential aircraft, but the striking similarities to other planes paint jobs has not gone unnoticed.

“We’re supposed to be impressed that AF1’s new paint scheme is just an old TWA?” Congressman Eric Sorensen, a Democrat from Illinois posted on social media.

Trans World Airlines was in the process of painting its planes with a strikingly similar color scheme when it was acquired by American Airlines in 2001.

“The last paint scheme for TWA and the proposed Air Force One paint schemes are really close, I mean, really close,” Bob van der Linden, a curator at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum told CNN.

Trump’s older brother Fred Trump Jr. was briefly a pilot for TWA before he died in 1981 of complications from alcoholism.

“What he loved doing was flying airplanes,” the president told the Washington Post in 2019. “I remember being at the house and other pilots from TWA would come to the house and they’d come to work with Fred because he was a very natural talent.”

The new Air Force One paint job also has drawn some comparisons to Donald Trump’s private Boeing 757, which sports a similar, though reversed, color scheme and a flowing flag. The aircraft, which used to have a stylized T on the tail, replaced a 727 with similar colors in 2011.

Richard Aboulafia, the managing director of AeroDynamic Advisory, an aerospace management consulting firm, doesn’t believe the colors chosen for the new Air Force One were “optimal,” but they represent the man who selected them.

“It resembles Trump’s personal paint scheme, that is not too out of the ordinary,” he said.

When Trump operated an airline from 1989 – 1992 – known as the Trump Shuttle with flights from New York to Boston and Washington, DC – the planes were white with red lettering.

One similar paint scheme that likely did not figure into Trump’s designs for the new planes was that of North American Airlines.

The charter carrier flew Boeing 757s, including the campaign planes of former presidents George W. Bush in 2000 and Barack Obama in 2008. When not painted with the candidate’s names, the aircraft featured a billowing flag on the tail, a white top, dark bottom and a gold cheatline down the side.

The airline ceased operations after filing for bankruptcy in 2014.

The new VC-25B liveries also have drawn some comparison to two of the paint jobs worn by US Airways jets before the airline merged with American in 2015.

Starting in the late 1990s, the airline painted planes with a dark blue top, a white and red cheat line down the side, and a stylized US flag on the tail. A later version flipped the colors with a light top and the dark blue below the cheat lines. The flag stayed on the tail.

Trump’s chosen paint job has already been applied to at least one of the C-32s flying in the Air Force fleet.

The modified Boeing 757 was spotted taking off from Greenville, Texas, last month by plane spotter @TT33Operator. The aircraft are often used by the vice president, the first lady and for transporting the president to airports where the modified 747s can’t land.

Four C-32s will get the new paint job when they go in for routine maintenance, the Air Force said in a statement. One of the military planes actually first flew for TWA, so a new paint job could be a return to an older planned livery.

A Boeing 737 and a Gulfstream 700 jet used by the Department of Homeland Security have also been given similar paint jobs.

Color causes problems

Trump’s choice of a paint scheme was not only a matter of aesthetics. Paint colors – especially dark ones – can have an impact on how heat is dissipated from the aircraft.

The darker blue paint absorbs sunlight and gets hot.

“If you’re going to proceed with the darker color, it would effectively drive a requirement to have more robust cooling in areas where that heat could gather and would be a problem,” a person familiar with the design told CNN.

The new jets have a $4.3 billion fixed price contract, so any changes would reopen the contract and likely cause a price increase, the source said.

“It’s a manageable problem, but it is a complexity, because Boeing has lost so much money on this contract,” the source said. “They’re going to look for every opportunity to kind of gain back some funding.”

An additional $15.5 million was added to the award in December for “integration of new communications capability,” the Air Force said. However, it’s not clear if that was done to address any thermal problems with the new paint job.

When will the planes fly the President?

While at least one of the C-32 planes has been painted with the new paint scheme, it’s still not clear when Trump will get to fly on the modified 747s.

The most important parts of the aircraft are what is beneath its skin, and the planes serving the president must have substantial security and telecommunications upgrades.

The jet donated by the Qatari government is being modified in Waco, Texas, and could be ready as early as this summer.

Aboulafia questions if that schedule offers enough time to properly retrofit the Qatari jet for presidential use.

“The idea that in a year you could strip an airplane down to its basics and then integrate the mission equipment packages needed to bring it in line with today’s Air Force One is somewhere between farcical and ridiculous,” he said.

The two other planes are being worked on by Boeing in San Antonio. The latest delivery timeline provided by the Air Force would have them take off in mid-2028, just before Trump’s term ends in January 2029.

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