Boeing's latest financial report shows that the "Air Force One" special plane project has cumulative overruns of more than 3.1 billion US dollars
Topic: Global market volatility intensifies Institutions: A-shares still have medium- and long-term allocation value The company's latest financial report released on Tuesday showed that the replacement project for the two "Air Force One" special planes is now four years behind schedule, and the contract will cause the company a $280 million loss in the second quarter of 2026. During Trump's first term as president, Boeing signed a contract with the U.S. government to build two military versions of the Boeing 747 airliner. Delivery of the plane, originally scheduled for 2024, has been pushed back to 2028 at the earliest, leaving Boeing facing billions of dollars in cost overruns. Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg sent an internal email to all employees on Tuesday, saying that the company is investing "significant resources" in striving to complete aircraft deliveries by 2028. Boeing said it incurred $280 million in additional costs in the three months through June from expenses related to production and certification. According to reports, the cumulative cost overrun of this project has exceeded $3.1 billion, all of which is borne by Boeing itself. The financial report once again highlights the plight of the soaring costs of the two Boeing 747 modification projects. The project began in 2018, when Trump pushed then-Boeing CEO Calhoun to sign a contract that capped the cost to U.S. taxpayers at $3.9 billion. The agreement has since been adjusted to roughly $4.5 billion. Last year, Trump proposed using an aircraft donated by Qatar to serve as an interim presidential plane, citing delays in the delivery of the Air Force One project. But this plan also encountered cost overruns and various thorny problems: the aircraft lacked some safety features. This directly led to Trump taking this new plane to fly to Türkiye to attend the NATO summit, but when he returned, he changed to an older version of Air Force One. According to reports, the U.S. Secret Service urged Trump to replace his landline, fearing that the new plane’s security facilities would not be sufficient to deal with various security threats. The aircraft donated by Qatar still needs to be modified at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade the power supply system, circuit lines, and install encrypted communications and self-defense related equipment. Boeing's overall loss in the second quarter was US$428 million, which was superimposed on a loss of US$7 million in the first quarter.