AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2014 - 72

VERTICAL PANELS (left) provide a year-byyear description of SAM 27000's presidential
service. President Reagan's in-flight office
(right) features his ever-present jar of jelly
beans. The aircraft sits on pedestals 25 feet
above the ground (below).

Raymond Loewy, a famed industrial designer,
had worked with First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy to
develop the now-familiar blue-and-white livery associated with presidential airplanes.
An Air Force aircraft may use the call sign "Air
Force One" only when a sitting president is on board.
This call sign was created after a potential traffic
conflict and confusion in 1953 between President
Dwight D. Eisenhower's Lockheed 749 Constellation,
Columbine II, and an Eastern Air Lines flight having a
similar call sign. When the vice president is on board,
the call sign is Air Force Two. (The president and vice
president may not fly aboard the same aircraft at the
same time.)
The Secret Service regarded "Air Force One" as a
code name that was not to be used publicly. President
Kennedy, however, liked the name so much that he told
his staff and the White House press corps to use it. It
was not long before SAM 26000 and its sister ship,
SAM 27000, became two of the most important and
recognizable airplanes in U.S. history.
SAM 26000 carried President Kennedy to Dallas,
where he was assassinated on November 22, 1963. It
was aboard this airplane that Vice President Lyndon
B. Johnson was sworn in as the new president. SAM
26000 then returned Kennedy's body and the new
president to Washington, D.C.
This aircraft was dubbed The Spirit of '76 by
President Richard M. Nixon and is now on display at
the National Museum of the United States Air Force
at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio.
The second presidential VC-137C, SAM 27000,
was accepted by the Air Force in 1972 and eventually
dubbed The Spirit of American Democracy. It was first
used by Nixon and then by all subsequent presidents
up to and including President George W. Bush. It was
the last of the Boeing 707s used in presidential service.
Like its sister ship, SAM 27000 carried 52 passengers-including some obviously very famous
ones-plus a crew of 18. (In airline configuration,
that model 707 carried as many as 189 passengers.)
It cruised at Mach 0.85 (typically 480 knots), carried
72 | AOPA PILOT December 2014

23,000 gallons of fuel, had a range of 6,650 nautical miles, and was
powered by four 18,000-pound-thrust Pratt & Whitney JT3D turbofan engines. Maximum allowable takeoff weight was 327,000
pounds. Unlike the presidential Boeing 747 that entered service
in 1990, the VC-137C did not have in-flight refueling capability.
A fascinating piece of trivia involving SAM 27000 is that it
made a total of 1,440 takeoffs as Air Force One but landed only 1,439
times. In other words, it departed more times than it arrived. This
anomaly occurred on August 8, 1974, when Air Force One departed
Andrews Air Force Base for Southern California with President
Nixon aboard. It was during this flight that Nixon's resignation took
effect. Remember Watergate? At the same time, Gerald R. Ford was
sworn in as the new president. At that moment, the call sign of the
airplane had to revert from Air Force One to SAM 27000.
During its 28 years of service, the airplane carried more presidents (seven) to more countries, for more meetings, and on more
missions (445) than any aircraft in history. And no luggage was
ever lost.



AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2014

Contents
AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2014 - Cover1
AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2014 - Cover2
AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2014 - Contents
AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2014 - 2
AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2014 - 3
AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2014 - 4
AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2014 - 5
AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2014 - 6
AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2014 - 7
AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2014 - 8
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AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2014 - 21
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AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2014 - 34
AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2014 - 35
AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2014 - 36
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AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2014 - 41
AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2014 - 42
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AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2014 - 45
AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2014 - 46
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AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2014 - Cover3
AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2014 - Cover4
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