Well, it had annual revenue of $60 billion or so last year, which is a damn sight past “barely exists.”
However, it used to be WAY bigger. It was once one of the five biggest companies in the USA. Today it’s dropped out of the top fifty. Still huge (by way of comparison, GE by itself is a larger business than all of the four big North American sports league combined) but a fraction of its glory days.
I’m sure that galleys, seats, and doors present regulatory hoops for Boeing to jump through, but I’d be surprised if that’s the main source of the delays. Air Force One needs to have all sorts of secure communications, electronic countermeasures, and other changes to make it a secure, airborne command post. They may even be adapting it for air-to-air refueling.
I’m curious about these 747-800 airframes. Boeing’s not manufacturing those at all anymore, are they? If not, then where do the airframes come from? Old 747-8s?
If they are still making those airframes, then why? And who/what are they making them for? Cargo only? Military only? Air Force One only?
Boeing made 747s right up to 2023 so it may be that the airframes in question were built specifically for this purpose, and for a few other legacy purposes, like cargo or military applications.
Undelivered, but not terribly old ones, yes. They are using two 747-8is which were ordered by Russian airline Transaero in 2011, but had not ever been delivered, as Transaero had filed for bankruptcy prior to taking ownership of the planes. The 747-8i, an intercontinental version of the 747-8 (the final 747 series), was first delivered to a customer in 2012.
It’s not clear to me exactly when the two “donor” 747-8is were originally completed, but it’d probably be sometime after 2015 (when Transaero declared bankruptcy) but before 2017, when the USAF entered into an agreement to purchase the two planes for conversion to VC-25Bs.
@kenobi_65 gave a specific answer, but in general, once a type certificate exists, an approved manufacturing organization (for that type) can build another plane in conformity with that type certificate pretty much indefinitely. You can stop production for several years and start up again without any changes and it’s more-or-less straightforward (quality control, regulatory oversight etc notwithstanding). A plane like the water bomber, CL-215 and subsequent variants has had an on/off/restart with upgrades production history, for example.
A rich enough buyer could ask for a B727 (or build a new AN 225) though it would cost a lot more for a one-off than a functional production line… assuming you can get the exact same parts and tooling.
Changing parts, methods, procedures, materials, aircraft performance and functionality means changing that type design though and that means much more $$$.
Which comes back to the AF1 problem. The newfangled fancy high tech latest-and-greatest never approved on this type before stuff is stupid expensive to get done.
And this particular adaptation being done about once every 25/30 years, and every time adding a whole new set of capabilities on a type, ISTM it would be pretty much starting from scratch every time.
So, if a big chunk of the obstacles are regulatory, that means that Trump could make it happen more quickly by flexing his power and relaxing the regulations… but that would mean that Trump, personally, would be less safe. It’ll be interesting to see which side of Trump’s selfishness wins out, here.
I don’t exactly know the extent of the President’s powers, but changes to regulations in the United States are, to my understanding, acts of Congress, and much of it is public information. They are SLOW AS FUCK too.
It would also severely undermine confidence in aviation safety for American products and other countries would be well within their rights to refuse to allow any “relaxed” aircraft products from operating within their borders. I suppose AF1 could just fly around the USA but I’m pretty sure the intent is to be able to go to other countries.
It’s not the shortcut it may seem to be.
Sounds absolutely perfect for Musk and Trump, then 
[Ready. Fire. AIM!]
HP also comes to mind… Just look at the printer shitshow
IBM also comes to mind… Went the same route
A related problem is that to a degree (huge generalization) competition can keep a company honest. But over time, it is easier to buy out or merge with a competitor than compete, especially if you’re wealthier. Continue this enough, and there’s no longer much if any viable competition, and your quality can degrade because there’s no other game in town. The classic too big to fail scenario.
Which is a big reason that Boeing is still even in the game, despite it’s recent abysmal records with quality control, compliance, and delays.
[ just to be explicit about something I think is implicit in many of the posts to date, as I lack the detailed understanding of aerospace that other posters have to otherwise make qualified judgement! ]
Then again, HP probably did need to shift its focus somewhat from the engineers to the businesspeople. Back in the day, HP optimized everything, to the finest possible degree. They were always reinventing the wheel, any time they could make an even slightly more effective wheel. But while this did lead to some extremely high-quality products, it’s also a lot of time and effort for only very small improvements, which isn’t a sustainable business model.
Maybe the pendulum swung too far the other way, but it did need to swing.
My understanding was that it’s actually more work to have to take apart an existing airframe and modify it to VC-25 standards than it would have been to simply build them from scratch.
Not generally the case, but depends on the extent of changes, which I’m not privy to, of course.
When you introduce something new to an existing plane (e.g. gut a commercial floorplan, make it a business jet) only the areas you are changing and their follow-on effects get regulatory scrutiny. The depth of scrutiny and new analysis, tests, demonstrations of compliance, will be a function of how significant the things you are changing are…and there’s legal definitions and precedent for what counts as “significant”. So you may need new compliance and latest standards for seats, bulkheads, emergency equipment, but not for the engines, flight controls, exterior lights, etc.
Just negotiating that change with the regulators can take months or even years to agree to. But at least you don’t have to redo all the stuff you aren’t touching.
Think of home renovations. You gut your kitchen, you are required to update your wiring. You have no obligation to update the wiring in your garage, unless they’re the same circuit or something. Same principle, just incredibly more bureaucratic and technical.
Given the number of specialized aircraft that get described as “a modified <model X>”, I think that the aircraft industry has come to the conclusion that it is not, in fact, cheaper to start from scratch.
I know the USAF likes 4-engine planes for transporting the president, but at this point maybe they need to seriously consider the Boeing 777X for the new Air Force One if it’s more troublesome to remodel an existing plane than a still-yet-to-roll-off-assembly-line one.
At this point, the USAF and Boeing have invested five years of conversion work, and, undoubtedly, a crap-ton of money, into the conversions of the 747-8i. Scrapping that work, and starting from scratch with designing a VC-whatever version of the 777, would undoubtedly delay the project by a significant number of years, and cost far far more.
Exhibit A: the Boeing 737 family. The data sheet is 100 pages long (as of Nov 2020, the copy I have on my phone) and describes no fewer than fourteen distinct variants.