New Presidential Jets Will Have Millions of Miles of History to Build On

WASHINGTON —  To press, passengers and the President aboard Air Force One, certain truths are self-evident:

The smaller the country, the longer the national anthem.

Dropping in on a state fair, dedicating a dam, inspecting a poverty pocket indicates that it is campaign time again.

Congressmen flying back to their district to get within glad-hand range of a presidential speech means that Election Day is near.

Breaking out the long-stemmed champagne glasses signifies satisfaction in the main cabin at the election returns.

A Nixon Martini

A “perfect martini,” hand-stirred by Richard M. Nixon, requires the best imported vermouth and an off-brand gin.

A seldom-varying lunch of cottage cheese garnished with lettuce, radishes, celery sticks and carrot shreds, all smothered in A-1 Sauce, confirms that Gerald R. Ford is aboard.

Grits for breakfast indicates that Jimmy Carter is presiding over the Oval Office in the sky.

The aroma of chili, meat loaf, macaroni and cheese and similar fare wafting from the galley announces that dinner is about to be served to Ronald Reagan. That is, unless Nancy Reagan is aboard, in which case the menu takes a nutritious turn in the direction of crab meat salad or a shrimp-and-avocado platter.

When the chief steward defrosts the lobster tails and filet mignon, everyone on board unwinds for the final leg of another journey.

Oracles Count Jelly Beans

These days, oracles at the back of the bus, where the 10-member press pool is crammed in near the aft galley, count the jelly beans in the big brass bowl and, from the sudden drop in demand, augur a lame-duck President.

But the big bowl still has to be bolted down so it doesn’t disappear, the way the matches, cocktail glasses, towels, note pads, shaving cream, even an occasional pillow case, all decorated with the presidential seal, find their way into some senator’s attache case or a photographer’s camera bag.

But the big news for fliers on presidential aircraft is that after 25 years the White House jet is about to expand to jumbo size.

Boeing’s Wichita, Kan., plant is fitting out a 747 with a presidential bedroom and bathroom, an enlarged oval office, a 14-place conference room, an emergency medical center, 10 work stations for speech writers and aides, all the latest communications equipment and state-of-the-spook-art decoding devices. Soon there even may be enough elbow room for a pool reporter to reach for a typewriter without knocking the cheese dip off the table.

Late 1988 Delivery

The first of two jumbos in the $250-million order will be delivered late in 1988, in time to taxi Ronald and Nancy into retirement at the Santa Barbara ranch without the Administration’s being accused of seeking more deluxe transportation. A backup 747 will be ready a few months later.

The jumbos, 80 feet longer and three times as roomy, can fly 8,000 miles without refueling, compared to the 7,000-mile range of the 7O7s they are replacing. They can land on shorter runways, cruise 40 m.p.h. faster at 640 m.p.h. and accommodate 70 passengers and a crew of 23, contrasted with the current 47 passengers and 17 crew members.

Although not as lavishly appointed as the gilt and bejeweled flying throne rooms of Arab oil sheiks, the jumbos destined for the huge hangars at Andrews Air Force Base represent a giant step in chief executive air travel since Franklin D. Roosevelt buckled his seat belt aboard the four-engine DC-4 called the Sacred Cow, the first presidential aircraft, or when Harry S. Truman scared Bess and Margaret by having the pilot of his DC-6 buzz the White House while they were on the roof watching an air show.

President’s Call Sign

Air Force One, by the way, is not an airplane. Ever since Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Super Constellation, the Columbine II, almost got its control tower signals mixed up with an Eastern flight out of Washington, Air Force One has been the call sign of any Air Force plane with the President on board.

The big new presidential jets will have to log a couple of million miles before tracing in the changing skies of history the glorious and sometimes eerie contrails drawn by the 707s they are replacing.

Tail No. 26,000 joined the SAM Fleet--Special Air Missions--on Oct. 12, 1962. This is the plane that took John F. Kennedy to Ireland for tea in the widow Ryan’s thatched cottage, to Berlin for his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech.

The Plane Kennedy Loved

On Nov. 22, 1963, it made the 13-minute hop from Carswell Air Force Base, Ft. Worth, to Love Field, Dallas, where a few hours later Kennedy’s coffin was loaded into the tail section, now occupied by the press pool, while Lyndon B. Johnson in the forward cabin took the oath of office as the 36th President. The plane Kennedy loved, and which Jackie fitted out with fine bone china, made a low pass over Arlington National Cemetery as his body was lowered into the grave.

Aboard No. 26,000, Johnson became the first President to circle the globe; Nixon reopened relations with the People’s Republic of China, visited the Soviet Union twice and had his pilot, Col. Ralph Albertazzie, slip Henry A. Kissinger into Paris 14 times for secret negotiations to end the war in Vietnam.

The Kissinger caper was dubbed Operation Cherchez la Femme because the secretary of state invariably was seen leaving a White House function early with a woman on his arm to decoy the press away from following him to Andrews Air Force Base.

Kennedy greeted all guests and press as soon as he came aboard, then disappeared into his quarters to rap about war, women and old movies with cronies like Dave Powers and Larry O’Brien. Fond of cigars, he often palmed a smoldering butt in his left pocket while waving to an airport crowd, a habit that sometimes resulted in a reweaving bill from his tailor.

Johnson Lectures Reporters

Belching loudly between mouthfuls of Cutty Sark, Johnson could be rude, crude and folksily charming as he wooed and lectured the press. He invited reporters to join him on the sofa bed in his stateroom to compare crowd counts. Frank Cormier, who rode Air Force One for 18 years as the AP White House correspondent, remembers a naked Johnson delivering an economics lesson to reporters, while toweling off after campaigning in the noonday sun.

Ford got tangled up in an umbrella alighting at Salzburg, Austria, and fell down the last four steps of Air Force One. He recovered with a nimble one-liner: “I’m sorry I tumbled in like this.”

The press pool rarely gets to see Reagan on board, except to take photos from the aft staircase of Nancy and the President, waving from the front steps, he with the right hand, she always with the left, two Hollywood pros who never block each other’s camera angle.

There have been bomb scares in Berlin and Dublin, and recently, with Reagan aboard, a gasket in the galley blew out with a loud bang that set nerves on edge as the pilot quickly descended from 27,000 to 14,000 feet.

Getting a Closer View

Air Force One gets called on for a little stunt flying when a President treats guests to a closer look at Mt. Rushmore or the Grand Canyon.

Charles Palmer, who just retired as chief steward after 13 years on Air Force One, points out unhappily that the passengers often include dogs. “Nixon had that poodle and a cocker spaniel and that Irish setter we called Big Red,” he says. “And people were always giving dogs to Amy Carter.”

Recently Lucky, Nancy Reagan’s 65-pound Bouvier sheep dog, was taken to the Santa Barbara ranch because it never was White House broken. Lucky also misbehaved within camera range on the helicopter pad.

Policy on Pet Food

“We don’t carry pet food and try not to feed the dogs because of the waste factor,” Palmer says. “But the press and Secret Service are always tossing them something under the table.”

George Reedy, Johnson’s press chief, once banned from Air Force One a newsman who staggered aboard intoxicated, but the days of the hard-drinking reporter vanished with the bourbon-and-poker sessions on the Ferdinand Magellan, F.D.R.’s private railroad car.

“On the final leg, you might relax with a gin and tonic, but these mostly are fairly boring, work-intensive trips,” says Terry Hunt, the AP White House correspondent.

It costs $7,615 an hour to keep Air Force One flying. The press pool pays its own way.

“We charge them the commercial coach rate, plus $1,” says Billy Dale in the White House transportation office, who sends out bills to news organizations.

Equipment Arrives First

A few days in advance of Air Force One’s arrival, two huge military cargo planes deliver the President’s bubble-top limousine and a backup, four armored cars for the Secret Service, metal detectors for crowd surveillance, sometimes even a fire engine, and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of communications equipment. A press charter, sometimes two, and the backup 707 fly in with the President’s plane.

Frequent press travelers on Air Force One sometimes see Americans living abroad grow homesick, even tearful, at the sight of Air Force One rolling to a landing on an alien runway.

In one of those poetic moments that always surprised listeners, gruff Johnson gave the view from the top of the stairs:

“My plane has landed on many continents. The wheels have never stopped, and the door has never opened that I have not looked upon faces which would not liked to have traded citizenship with me.”