An emergency inflatable slide accidentally deployed from the Qatari-gifted Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday, forcing President Trump to wait aboard Marine One for roughly 20 minutes before departing for a Republican convention in Dallas.
The slide inflated from the front right exit of the Boeing 747, the door on the opposite side from where Trump normally boards, while military personnel were on the aircraft ahead of the president's arrival. A person briefed on the situation told Fox News that a military aide accidentally triggered the mechanism. Air Force crew members scrambled to control the inflated slide in the wind before eventually deflating and removing it from the tarmac.
Trump landed at Andrews aboard Marine One and sat inside the helicopter with the door closed while personnel dealt with the slide. The scene raised immediate questions about whether the president's travel plans had been disrupted, and whether the Qatari-gifted jet, which has faced months of scrutiny over its defense capabilities, had suffered another operational failure.
When reporters asked about the delay, Trump framed the deployment as intentional testing rather than a mishap. He told the press pool:
"They were checking it before, and they just wanted to make sure. So they've, I guess, already put it up. They want to make sure everything works perfectly."
Asked whether he was confident the plane was safe to fly, the president was direct. "Yeah, I am, or I wouldn't be on it," he said.
White House communications director Steven Cheung backed the president's account. The AP reported Cheung's statement: "As the President has said, the slide was checked out to make sure everything works perfectly. Air Force One is on its way to Dallas so he can deliver his much-anticipated speech to a raucous and sold-out crowd."
The plane ultimately took off and landed safely in Dallas. But the White House offered no detailed explanation of how a routine safety check produced an accidental deployment, or why, if the check was planned, Trump had to sit idle on the tarmac for 20 minutes while crew members wrestled the slide back into the aircraft.
The incident was not treated as trivial behind the scenes. Breitbart reported that the old Air Force One was brought to Joint Base Andrews as a backup, though Trump ultimately departed on the newer Qatari-gifted jet after the slide was cleared.
That precaution fits a pattern. The Qatari-gifted Boeing 747, which Trump had refurbished at taxpayer expense and painted in red, white, dark blue, and gold, has drawn persistent questions about its security profile since its unveiling at Joint Base Andrews earlier this year.
The most serious episode came in July, when Trump flew the jet to a NATO summit in Turkey. According to a Washington Post report cited in the original Hill account, Trump had to secretly depart the summit using an alternate military aircraft after a security threat from Iran surfaced. The Secret Service shuttled the president in a catering truck to a separate military plane at the airport in Ankara.
Trump had announced publicly that he would use the old Air Force One to leave Turkey and board the new jet in the United Kingdom, telling reporters the switch would let troops stationed overseas see the newly renovated aircraft. The Washington Post's reporting painted a different picture, one driven by an active threat, not a goodwill tour.
The Secret Service had warned Trump against flying the Qatari-gifted jet out of Turkey because of the Iranian threat, raising pointed questions about the aircraft's defensive systems and whether they meet the standard expected of a presidential plane.
Wednesday's slide mishap was minor compared to the Turkey episode. Nobody was hurt, the plane flew, and the president arrived in Dallas on schedule. But the accumulation of incidents, an accidental slide deployment, a secret evacuation from a NATO summit, and ongoing questions about the jet's defense capabilities, adds up to a credibility problem for the aircraft program.
The Justice Department has since labeled the Iranian missile threat against Air Force One an "assassination attempt," underscoring the seriousness of the security environment the president's aircraft operates in. If the jet's defensive systems remain a subject of debate inside the national security establishment, even a routine maintenance error on the tarmac takes on a different weight.
Separately, the Pentagon stripped former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall's security clearance over a leak related to Air Force One, a reminder that the aircraft's vulnerabilities have already become a matter of internal government discipline.
The New York Post noted that the door from which the slide deployed was the same one Trump used to secretly exit the plane in Turkey during the Iranian threat. Whether that detail is coincidence or a sign that the door's emergency mechanisms are getting extra attention from crew members, the White House did not say.
Several basic facts remain unclear. No official has explained what specific security shortcomings have been identified in the Qatari-gifted jet's defense systems, or who raised those concerns. The nature of the Iranian threat that forced the Turkey evacuation has not been publicly detailed beyond the broad label of a missile threat. And no one has clarified whether Wednesday's slide deployment caused any damage to the aircraft or the door mechanism.
Trump's willingness to board the jet and fly to Dallas signals confidence in the plane, or at least a determination not to let a tarmac mishap dictate his schedule. The old Air Force One standing by as a backup suggests that the people responsible for keeping the president alive are not quite as relaxed about it.
When the president's plane needs a spare parked next to it on the runway, the public deserves a fuller accounting of what is going wrong, and what has been done to fix it.