President Donald Trump toured a new Boeing plane on Saturday to inspect its hardware and technology, sources familiar told Breitbart News.
The brief tour happened in the morning, and sources told Breitbart News ahead of time it would underscore the company’s failure to produce new Air Force One planes years after the contract for them was finalized in 2018.
EXCLUSIVE: President Trump is expected to briefly tour a new Boeing plane to checkout the new hardware/technology, which will also highlight Boeing’s ineptitude and failure to deliver a new Air Force 1 on time as promised, sources familiar just told me.
— Matthew Boyle (@mboyle1) February 15, 2025
“President Trump is expected to briefly tour a new Boeing plane to checkout the new hardware/technology, which will also highlight Boeing’s ineptitude and failure to deliver a new Air Force 1 on time as promised, sources familiar just told me,” wrote Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle in a post on X shortly before Trump checked out the plane.
Trump spoke about his dissatisfaction with Boeing over the failure to produce the two replacement presidential aircraft in the 2018 contract while speaking with reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday.
“You know, Boeing, we’re not happy with the service we’re getting in terms of those planes. They would like to get more money. We’re not happy about that whole thing,” Trump said.
“We signed a very strong contract. I signed a guaranteed maximum contract, which they haven’t seen in a long time, and they’re saying they’re getting hurt by it, but they have to produce the product,” he added.
Trump noted that he negotiated the price of the yet-to-be-completed new Air Force One planes down from $5.7 billion to roughly $4 billion in his first term.
“They agreed to build planes at a certain price. They’re not used to that. They’re used to having time and material contracts,” Trump said, adding time and material contracts cause costs to balloon “five times more.”
According to the Associated Press, the planes are expected to be finished in 2027 and 2028, marking a three-year delay for each. They were originally scheduled to be completed in 2024 and 2025. The two Air Force I planes in use now are over thirty years old, per the outlet.
Trump on Wednesday also cited his ability to shave $1.7 billion off the Air Force One negotiation as an example of how the U.S. government can reduce waste on a larger scale.
“If people would care, they’d be able to do that with every single contract that’s put before them, and we wouldn’t have deficits,” Trump said. “We would have nothing but a tremendously low-taxed, wonderful country, but they have to care.”
