Air campaigns: how business jets play a key role in US elections

With just days until America votes, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump – along with their vice-presidential running-mates Tim Watz and JD Vance – have been spending recent weeks hopping among swing states from Arizona to North Carolina, Wisconsin to Georgia, in bid to sway still-undecided voters.

The schedule of a presidential candidate in these last stages of a campaign can be gruelling – a breakfast meeting with union leaders in Pittsburg, lunch with donors in Atlanta, an evening rally in deepest Appalachia. Despite modern virtual communications, in a country the size of the USA, crisscrossing the territory by air, pressing flesh and meeting voters face to face, has been essential for anyone aspiring to hold national office since the Second World War.

Harris, as serving vice-president, has the advantage of being able to use government aircraft – which use the callsign Air Force Two when she is on board – at least when she is on official business. However, there are strict rules on when federal assets can be used by presidents and vice-presidents for purely campaign purposes.

Trump too has a trump card when it comes to covering the country. The Trump Organization owns a Boeing 757-200 – registration N757AF and dubbed Trump Force One – which the former president has been using as his personal transport during his campaign. The 33-year-old aircraft, which he has owned since 2011, now has a US flag emblazoned on its tail. The jet has become as much part of his brand as Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue or his Mara-a-Lago estate.

The presidential poll is not the only vote taking place on 5 November. All 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 34 in the Senate will be up for grabs on the same day. While air travel is not a prerequisite for candidates in small states, that is not the case for those aspiring to be elected to Congress in larger ones: it takes nearly 10h to drive from one end of Montana to the other, for instance.

The election season is a busy time for specialist charter operators and brokers in this sector. They include Gregg Brunson-Pitts, founder and chief executive of Arlington, Virginia-based Advanced Aviation Team, and a former director under President George W Bush of the White House travel office.

Among other roles, the travel office coordinates the charter aircraft that flies in tandem with Air Force One (the aircraft carrying the serving president), with the likes of the White House press corps, Secret Service personnel, and staff who do not travel with the president.

Shortly after the transition to the Barack Obama administration in 2009, Brunson-Pitts moved into the private air charter world, setting up Advanced Aviation Team in 2015. As well as arranging conventional business flights, the company has worked with several campaigns leveraging the contacts and experience he gained during his time in the White House.

They include the Biden-Harris effort in 2020, the Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz presidential campaigns in 2016, and the Elizabeth Warren’s and Pete Buttigieg bids for the Democratic nomination in 2019/2020. “We’re non-partisan and we work for both sides of the aisle,” he says.

In the six-month run-up to a presidential election, campaign charters make up more than half Advanced Aviation Team’s business; at other times, it is about a quarter. Although Brunson-Pitts says he will try to visit NBAA BACE briefly, he says that by this time in the cycle it is “crazy town” as far as his working week is concerned. “Before it all starts, I try to get as much sleep as possible and spend quality time with my family,” he says.

Although Advanced Aviation Team does not operate its own aircraft, Brunson-Pitts sees his role as taking all the headaches of managing air travel off the campaign organisers. “They have so many other things on their plate – hotels, buses, getting the candidate on stage, to TV interviews. The flight is just a small part,” he says.

Running air transport for a presidential campaign team can be heart-in-mouth stuff. “The campaign will get more intense as time goes on and the stakes get higher. There will often be several stops in a day. A missed stop or something going wrong with the plane can really damage a campaign, so we work hard on making sure that doesn’t happen,” he says. “Any campaign will constantly be making short-notice changes. Our job is to see around corners.”

Just as with any aircraft, technical issues can cause a campaign’s best laid plans to go awry. In August a Boeing 737 transporting Vance and operated by Eastern Air Express had to return to Milwaukee Mitchel International airport because of a reported door-seal malfunction. A week earlier, Trump’s own 757 made an emergency landing in Billings, Montana due to a reported hydraulic leak.

Occasionally, rather than chartering a jet on the commercial market, a campaign or a cause associated with a campaign – a so-called Political Action Committee or PAC – will draw on the generosity of an aircraft owner to donate flight hours. However, there are tight rules around such donations with the Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Election Commission, and the Internal Revenue Service all looking out for missteps.

There are FAA rules around what a FAR 91 carrier is permitted to do that most business aviation operators will be familiar with. Under these guidelines, the owner of an aircraft is allowed to provide air transport for guests, so long as no fee is paid. However, that can fall foul of federal election laws, which regards in-kind contributions the same as cash contributions, explains Nathan Pietila, an attorney with Aero Law Group.

Campaign finance laws regulate contributions to campaigns as well as expenditures by these campaigns. While in-kind contributions are permitted to a campaign, there is a $3,300 cap on donations by individuals to candidates for federal office, explains. Any value of a flight above that amount must be reimbursed to the aircraft’s owner even if the owner is not a charter carrier, says Pietila.

Another complication is that corporations themselves are banned from donating directly to candidates, so any campaign gift must be made by an individual. Campaigns and their donors often breach these regulations, he says. Every presidential campaign since 1992 has come under investigation by the FEC for improper aircraft use.

Another grey area when it comes to campaign transport is the issue of where official business stops and campaigning starts when it comes to serving presidents and vice-presidents. Often trips will overlap, such as when a president flies on Air Force One to an official event, but tags on a political stop. In some instances, the White House counsel’s office will step in to work out what percentage of the cost of a government flight should be recharged to a campaign.

As in 2020 when Joe Biden stood as a former vice-president, both candidates in this presidential election will be used to flying on either Air Force One or Air Force Two, typically a modified 757 operated by the US Air Force as the vice-presidential transport.

Air Force One, currently one of two Boeing 747-200s designated by the USAF as VC-25A, is arguably the most recognisable private jet in the world. Although Franklin D Roosevelt was the first president to set up a White House flight office, and Dwight Eisenhower the first to fly a jet – a Boeing 707 Stratoliner – on presidential business, John F Kennedy was the first to fly on a jet designed specifically for the office. That 707 was the first Air Force One as we know it.

The current aircraft – delivered in 1991 during the George H Bush administration – have been due for replacement for years. However, the VC-25B programme – a pair of heavily modified 747-8s – has shifted right several times. Back in 2018, when Boeing won the $3.9 billion contract, the aircraft were expected to enter service this December. First flight is now slated for 2026.

The delay – largely the result of Boeing having won the bid on a fixed-price contract, which precludes it from passing on costs that rose during the pandemic to the customer – is just one of multiple crises the troubled airframer has faced in the past five years.

However, we do at least know what the aircraft will look like, the livery having been selected by President Joe Biden in March last year after rejecting a colour scheme chosen by his predecessor that differed significantly from that on the current VC-25As. However, that could change again should Trump make a triumphant return to the White House in January.