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President Obama has already made clear what he will miss the most when he leaves office in 15 months. “People sometimes ask me what the biggest perk of being president is,” he told visitors at the White House last week. “No. 1 is the plane.”

In September, he told another audience that “the plane is nice” and that unfortunately for him “my lease is running out,” so he might soon have to “start taking off my shoes again going through security.” In Kenya in July, he noted that when he visited as a young man his luggage was lost: “That doesn’t happen on Air Force One.”

Let’s face it: The plane is, in fact, pretty nice, and the president’s luggage is indeed very rarely lost. But the plane is also getting old. And so after more than a million miles of flying while in office, its current primary passenger is planning to bequeath his successor — or perhaps his successor’s successor — a new-and-improved Air Force One spiffed up for the smartphone age.

“It’s way overdue,” said Joseph W. Hagin, a White House deputy chief of staff under President George W. Bush who initiated plans for a new plane only to see them shelved when the nation’s finances grew precarious.

 

You can hang new engines on it, you can cram all sorts of new technology on it, but it’s still a very old airplane.

 

 

To read the full article please go to: The New York Times