Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun said Wednesday that the aerospace giant lost $660 million in the first quarter on the project building new presidential jets. Former President Donald Trump in 2018 famously renegotiated the contract for the pair of 747s, which are referred to as Air Force One when the president is on board. The new agreement established a fixed-price contract worth $3.9 billion, placing all the risks of cost overruns on Boeing.
“Air Force One — I'm just going to call a very unique moment, a very unique negotiation, a very unique set of risks that Boeing probably shouldn't have taken,” Calhoun said in an earnings call.
The company now expects to lose about $1.1 billion on the Air Force One project. “We took some risks not knowing that Covid would arrive and not knowing that inflation would take hold like it has - and both of those have impacted us fairly severely," Calhoun said. “But we are where we are, and we're going to deliver great airplanes.”
The first presidential 747 was scheduled to be delivered in 2024, but now is not expected until 2026.
