During his first term in office, President Donald Trump negotiated a deal with Boeing on a pair of new Air Force One replacements, but Boeing has failed to meet the terms of the 2018 agreement and the project has faced delays and cost overruns.

On Saturday, Trump toured a private Boeing jet in Florida and used the opportunity to highlight the company's failures and shortcomings in completing the heavily modified presidential aircraft, CBS News reported.

White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said in a statement, "President Trump is touring a new Boeing plane to check out the new hardware/technology," and added, "This highlights the project's failure to deliver a new Air Force One on time as promised."

Trump unhappy with Boeing over new Air Force One project

Politico reported on Thursday that President Trump "has beef with Boeing" over the company's apparent inability to complete the two new Air Force One replacement aircraft on time and under budget.

"Boeing, we’re not happy with the service we’re getting in terms of those planes," Trump told reporters on Wednesday at the White House. "They’re saying they’re getting hurt by it. They have to produce the product. They agreed to build planes at a certain price."

In 2018, during his first term, Trump personally negotiated a $3.9 billion deal with Boeing to acquire a pair of highly modified 747-8s to replace the two current Air Force One jets that have been in service for decades.

Per CBS News, both of those planes were supposed to have been delivered and placed into service in 2024, but the U.S. Air Force now says it doesn't expect delivery on the first of the pair until 2027 and likely won't receive the second jet until 2028 or later.

Billions over budget and years behind schedule

In 2022, Defense One reported that Boeing's then-CEO Dave Calhoun seemed to express regret that his predecessor, former CEO Dennis Muilenburg, had agreed to the terms negotiated by President Trump -- specifically that Boeing would pay for any cost overruns instead of U.S. taxpayers -- that had already cost the company more than $660 million at that time.

"Air Force One, I'm just going to call a very unique moment, a very unique negotiation, a very unique set of risks that Boeing probably shouldn't have taken," he said. "But we are where we are, and we're going to deliver great airplanes."

Some of the problems the company pointed to as being at fault for the cost overruns and timing delays included disputes with subcontractors and lingering pandemic-related issues like supply chain shortages and workforce issues, and at that time it was estimated that the new planes that were supposed to be delivered in 2024 wouldn't be finished until at least 2026.

Fast-forward to December 2024, the original completion date, and Breaking Defense reported that cost overruns for Boeing on the Air Force One replacements project had surged to more than $2 billion while anonymous sources revealed that the already delayed delivery dates of 2026 and 2027 both both aircraft had been pushed back even further to around 2029 -- five years behind schedule.

Roughly one month later, in January and just a week after President Trump retook office, CNBC reported that he'd dispatched tech billionaire Elon Musk -- whose SpaceX company is a rival to Boeing -- to go and work with the company to figure out ways to trim the budget and hasten the delayed delivery dates. CEO Kelly Ortberg acknowledged at that time, "We’ve been engaged with Elon," and added, "The president wants those planes sooner so we’re working with Elon to see what can we do to pull up the schedule of those programs."

Trump insistent on new color scheme

One problem that consistently merited mention was President Trump's demand for Boeing to alter the Air Force One color scheme from baby blue, white, and gold -- as it has been since the 1960s -- to red, white, and dark blue to more closely resemble the American flag.

Politico reported that former President Biden scrapped the color change plan in 2022, ostensibly because the darker color might increase the aircraft's temperature and compel other modifications, but Trump remains insistent on the new scheme and told reporters last month, "We’ll be changing the colors. We want power blue, not baby blue."