Posted on 11/19/2006 10:58:22 PM PST by Paleo Conservative
HO CHI MINH CITY: The aircraft carrying United States President George W Bush on a tour of Asia suffered a tyre problem during a stopover in the southern Vietnamese city of Ho Chi Minh City, officials said on Monday.They said the problem that emerged after he landed Sunday in the city had been fixed and would not affect plans to travel later on Monday to Indonesia.
"We are back to normal," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said.
"There was a problem with a tyre, they were able to find a replacement, and they repaired it."
Bush always flies with two planes, and officials had made plans to transfer him from Air Force One -- a blue and white liveried Boeing 747 known across the world through television and Hollywood films -- to a smaller aircraft for the journey to Indonesia.
The president flew to Ho Chi Minh City after a weekend Asia-Pacific summit in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi. He was due Monday to visit the stock exchange here to highlight the country's growing economic clout.
Bush was scheduled to hold talks in Indonesia with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono before returning to the United States.
If you want on or off my aerospace ping list, please contact me by Freep mail.
Bump
disinfo? confusion?
Damn tyres!
Regards.
Don't we have any countermeasures to these Glitches that might be about to hit the plane? ;-)
This is why I only use tires. Good American tires.
None of those frou-frou "tyres" for me.
They also use a C-5-A to haul all of the motorcade around in.
Let's invade them too.
Yup - flew Dan Quayle once, and I became Air Force 2.
When he landed on the Abraham Lincoln, the pilot of the Viking got to squawk as Navy One. How cool is that?
Remember when Clinton took his "world junket" to China?
President Clinton's 10-day trip to China in 1998 provides a case in point. Accompanying the president were his wife and daughter, 5 Cabinet secretaries, 6 members of Congress, 86 senior aides, 150 civilian staff (doctors, lawyers, secretaries, valets, hairdressers, and so on), 150 military staff (drivers, baggage handlers, snipers, and so on), 150 security personnel, several bomb-sniffing dogs, and many tons of equipment, including 10 armored limousines and the "blue goose," Clinton's bulletproof lectern. The cost of the expedition was almost $19 million dollars according to the U.S. General Accounting Office.5 This figure represents what is called "incremental costs," that is costs in addition to the salaries of the federal employees who accompanied the president and the costs of planning the trip. The reported costs also did not include the expense of protecting the president, a figure that is classified for national security reasons.
The bulk of costs accrue to the Defense Department (DOD), which some critics charge is an unwise way to spend the country's defense dollars. To get the presidential entourage and its vast array of equipment to China and back, the Air Force few 36 airlift missions using Boeing 747, C-141, and C-5 (the largest transport, with a capacity of 145 tons of cargo) aircraft. The cost to DOD of the China trip was $14 million. Indeed, operating Air Force One alone costs over $34,000 an hour.
China was neither the least nor the most expensive presidential trip per day (that was probably the $42.8 million, 1,300 person, 10-day trip to Africa in March 1998). But if China can be used as an average, the cost of $1.8 million per day for a presidential trip overseas means that the incremental costs of President Clinton's foreign travel during his eight years in office came to more than $500 million.
True, but do you know the story behind why that is? Just a little Monday morning trivia.....
I was wondering how it was decked out for armament. Of course great minds...
So what's the story behind it? And did you ever find your perfect $100 hamburger?
ANY U.S. Air Force plane that the President flies on is called Air Force One
True, but do you know the story behind why that is? Just a little Monday morning trivia.....
The Presidential call sign was established for security purposes during the Eisenhower administration. The change stemmed from a 1953 incident where an Eastern Airlines commercial flight (8610) had the same call sign as a flight the President was on (Air Force 8610). The planes accidentally entered the same airspace, and after the incident the unique call sign "Air Force One" was introduced for the Presidential aircraft.
Good reminder!! People conveniently tend to forget all these expensive trips, paid for at the taxpayers' expense, by Clinton.
Yup yup yup!
See post #18.
And did you ever find your perfect $100 hamburger?
No, not yet, but we've been having a lot of fun trying. We did find some unexpectedly good BBQ just off the Rome, GA, airport, though.
Included in that list of civilians on Clinton's planes to China was Hillary's MOTHER as I recall.
The C-5 was used to haul Hillary's fat ....
Can you imagine the code names the Secret Service (trained monkeys to Hillary & Chelsea) probably has for her?
Replacement or a new tire? Do they know where the replacement came from? And if repaired -- who repaired it?
In those pictures of Pres. Bush in the national dress --- did it look as tho he had a special vest underneath it? He looked kinda bulky.
The A-model C-5s were built in the late 1960's and early 1970's, and at the time, they were not expected to be flying into "hot" zones. During the 1980's, the production line was re-opened with the much stronger, better capable C-5B model. The major difference between the models is the countermeasures against infrared missiles. For that reason, the President's stuff rides in C-5Bs when it goes anywhere, and only C-5Bs are allowed to go into the Southwest Asia theater of operations.
When I was deployed to Spain last year, the only times we saw C-5As were on flights headed into Ramstein Air Base in Germany, or into Incirlik Air Base, Turkey. The C-5Bs we saw were usually on the return leg from Kuwait or Iraq back to the U.S.
Of course, great minds won't discuss the security measures for AF-1.
The A models were refurbished sometime in the late 70's to early 80's, giving them tons of service life in the wing boxes. The solution was then engineered into the B models when they were bought in the 80's.
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