Trump gets Mike Pence a great plane for campaigning

As an aviation buff, I have sometimes cringed at the aging chartered airliners hastily repainted and thrown into the air on a grueling daily schedule of multiple stops by recent GOP presidential campaigns. Older planes are more widely available for charter than up-to-date, fuel-efficient airliners (which are so valuable they are usually kept in the air as much as possible), and they cost less per day, but more for fuel, than newer jets. But there is a downside in terms of dispatch reliability.

It looks to me as though the Trump campaign made a wise decision in chartering a very up-to-date airplane for Mike Pence to use alongside Trump Force One (itself no spring chicken).  Via Conservative Treehouse:

Governor Mike Pence gets his campaign airplane delivered today [Friday].  Top shelf.  It was almost complete in the following picture:

Based on the livery, the plane looks like a Boeing 737-700, or possibly 800, series from the fleet of the resurrected Eastern Airlines, which launched operations 14 months ago as a charter airline, but which has become a small scheduled airline, flying to the Caribbean and a few major US cities out of Miami.

As such, it probably has fewer passengers than in the winter, so its rather new fleet had availability for charter until winter nears.

The airplane handed to Pence is probably very new, and I have no way of knowing if the front of the plane had any executive features installed, such as a desk, TV monitors, a couch, and conference area. But because Trump understands the operational utility of a business configuration, my guess is that some such work was done. 

The rear of the plane probably is left in coach configuration for sale to members of the media who tag along with the campaign.

Update. Mike Ford writes:

The tail number looks to be N278EA....If you go to flightaware.com...you can track current, past & scheduled flights for that aircraft...could help to know where Pence will be speaking to tee up stories....unless the campaign works a deal with the FAA to drop the number from the system temporarily.

Going to Flightaware, it appears the plane flew into Burke Lakefront Airport on Friday, coming from Victorville Airport in California, where it was repainted at Southern California Logistics. Because it only spent overnight there, I doubt that it had any cabin reconfiguration work.

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