The Boeing 737 MAX spent almost two years grounded worldwide after two crashes killed everybody on board both aircraft. Its reputation has never entirely recovered, whatever the safety record since.

The United States Air Force is going to buy one, and put senior members of the U.S. government in it.

Air Mobility Command confirmed on 16 September that it intends to purchase a 737 MAX using $250 million authorised in the fiscal 2026 defence bill. That makes the Air Force the first military operator of the type anywhere.

What the C-40 Actually Does

The C-40 is not a shuttle bus. The C-40B is described by Air Mobility Command as an airborne office, fitted with secure voice and data communications so that a senior commander or government official can keep working at 35,000 feet. The C-40C is the more flexible version, reconfigurable for anywhere between 42 and 111 passengers.

Both are built on an interesting hybrid airframe. The fuselage is a 737-700, but the wings and landing gear come from the heavier 737-800, and auxiliary fuel tanks are fitted. That combination gives a listed unrefuelled range of roughly 4,500 to 5,000 nautical miles, which is what lets the aircraft cross oceans without stopping.

Above the C-40 sits the C-32, a specially configured Boeing 757-200 that carries the vice president, the first lady, Cabinet officials and congressional leaders. The new aircraft slots between the two fleets, which is probably the point.

The Variant Question Is the Interesting One

The Air Force has not said which MAX it is buying, and the choice tells you what it is really planning.

The MAX 7 is the direct descendant of the 737-700 and therefore the closest analogue to the existing C-40s. It was only certified by the FAA in August 2026 and has not yet been delivered to a single customer. Buying an aircraft with no operator base for a mission involving cabinet secretaries is a bold choice.

The MAX 10 matches the 757’s passenger capacity but not its range, which matters when the mission is transatlantic.

That leaves the MAX 8, the mature option, and there is a clue pointing at it. An earlier Air Force training solicitation referred specifically to the Boeing 737-8 MAX.

A standard 737-8 is listed at around 3,500 nautical miles, which is short of what the C-40 manages. But nobody buys a standard airliner for this job. Boeing’s BBJ MAX 8 configurations add substantial fuel capacity, and how the Air Force specifies the tanks will determine whether this aircraft merely supplements the C-40s or starts taking over missions currently flown by the C-32.

Why Boeing, and Only Boeing

The Air Force had already floated the idea of replacing both the C-32 and the C-40 fleets with a single type. Once that was on the table, the shortlist wrote itself.

Airbus builds aircraft that would do the job perfectly well. Putting the vice president of the United States into a European-designed airframe is not a decision anybody in Washington wants to defend, so interest moved to the MAX and stayed there. There is no current Boeing product that directly replaces the 757, which is the awkward part of the whole exercise.

The Elephant in the Cabin

It is not possible to write about a military MAX purchase without the grounding. Lion Air 610 in 2018 and Ethiopian Airlines 302 in 2019 killed everyone aboard both aircraft. In each case erroneous angle of attack data triggered MCAS, which repeatedly pushed the nose down and overrode the crew.

Boeing was heavily criticised for having left MCAS out of pilot training material and flight manuals. The fix requires agreement between two angle of attack sensors before MCAS activates, and lets the crew override it. The type has flown largely without incident since returning to service, and the aircraft now being bought is a very different proposition to the one grounded in 2019.

Air Mobility Command contracted differences training for its C-40B and C-40C crews earlier this year. It is a safe bet that MCAS features prominently in it.

Sources: Aviation Week; Air Mobility Command; The Aviationist; Boeing; U.S. Department of War