For more than sixty years, “Air Force One” has meant one specific shade of pale blue — the robin’s-egg scheme drawn up for John F. Kennedy in 1962. On 19 June, a different 747 rolled into the light inside a hangar at Joint Base Andrews, and the blue was gone.

In its place: a deep navy underbelly, a red stripe, the presidential seal by the door, and a large American flag on the tail. This is the VC-25B “bridge” aircraft — and its path to becoming Air Force One is one of the more unusual in the jet’s history.

A 747 with a backstory

The airframe is not new. It is a Boeing 747-8 built in 2012 as a flying palace for the Qatar Amiri Flight, the fleet that serves Qatar’s ruling House of Thani. In 2025 the government of Qatar donated the aircraft to the United States — a gift unusual enough that it drew considerable public debate — and the defence contractor L3Harris spent roughly ten months converting it into a presidential transport.

The result is a stopgap, not a permanent solution. But for an aircraft type as specialised as Air Force One — hardened, secure, and bristling with communications — turning a luxury 747 into a working presidential jet in under a year is no small feat of engineering.

A new look after six decades

The retired colour scheme has a pedigree. The pale blue-and-white livery — officially a shade called “luminous ultramarine” — was created for the Kennedy White House in 1962 and has clothed every Air Force One since. Swapping it for a darker, flag-forward design is the most visible break with that tradition in living memory.

Underneath the paint, though, the job is the same: move the president safely, anywhere, at any time, while staying in constant contact with the rest of the U.S. government.

Why a bridge was needed at all

The reason for the stopgap is simple: the real replacements are late. Boeing has been building two purpose-designed VC-25Bs — based on the larger 747-8 — for years, and the program has slipped repeatedly. Meanwhile the two existing VC-25As, 747-200s that entered service back in 1990, are wearing out.

The bridge jet buys time until Boeing’s pair is ready, expected around 2028. After that, the veteran blue-and-white 747s are destined, fittingly, for museums — where the colour that defined Air Force One for sixty years will finally come to rest.

Sources: U.S. Air Force; CNN; ABC News; Air & Space Forces Magazine; FlyingMag; Wikipedia.