After Election Day, the work of tearing down a presidential campaign begins. Field offices are dismantled. Bunting and balloons are junked. And a small company in Michigan gets back its airplane.
Since the end of the Republican National Convention, Mitt Romney has toured the country in a personalized McDonnell Douglas 83, where the tail fin sports his logo and the headrest on his seat is embroidered with “The Gov.” The plane is owned by USA Jet Airlines, a subsidiary of privately held Active Aero Group, with headquarters in Belleville, Mich. Before another client can fly tail number N949NS, it must first be de-Romneyized.
Like all campaign aircraft, Air Romney has taken a beating as it lugs the Republican nominee and his entourage—family, staff, surrogates, reporters, cameramen, Secret Service agents, flight attendants, mechanics, and more—all day, every day, through battleground states.
The first step in turning it around, says Active Aero spokeswoman Bernadette Quist, is a thorough cleaning. “Decontamination” may be more appropriate. Campaign planes are notoriously filthy places, where poor hygiene, recycled air, and threadbare immune systems combine to create flying tubes of contagion. When USA Jet leases an airplane to, say, the University of Michigan varsity hockey team, Quist says, it usually comes back none the worse for wear. “That just gets your basic pickup and cleaning,” she says. “This is going to need a little more intense care, shall we say.”
Once the plane is no longer a disease vector, it’s time to de-brand it. The Romney paint job—a blue belly and white top, with “BELIEVE IN AMERICA” stenciled on each side—will be painted over, likely with a mostly white coat and the USA Jet logo.
Next, the seats may be reconfigured. Romney didn’t request much in the way of customization before taking over the MD-83, with the exception of having extra captain’s tables installed, Quist says. Those may yet stay or go. “I think for the most part we’ll probably leave it as is, because we don’t want to do a lot of extra work that we don’t need to do—maybe somebody else would like it the way it is,” Quist says.
USA Jet also supplies the plane’s flight crew, from pilots to mechanics. Overall, the Romneys have been model clients. “The flight attendants that I’ve talked to have said that the Romney group is very low maintenance,” says Quist. “They’re just really nice and not demanding in terms of what they need. They’ve been great to work with.”
Active Aero’s other clients include sports teams, bands, casinos, and freight companies, in addition to political candidates from Barack Obama to Mike Huckabee. Before its run as the official Romney jet, the MD-83 has flown the Boston Bruins and U2, according to aircraft hobbyists who log the plane’s movements.
A small squadron of private aircraft has whisked Romney across the country during his long presidential candidacy, including a Hawker 400, a Learjet 35, a Cessna (TXT) Citation, and an Embraer (ERJ) Phenom 300, according to Think Progress. (It was one of these that Ann Romney nicknamed “Hair Force One” last December.)
The MD-83 makes more of a statement. On Monday, in Columbus, Ohio, on his last night as a campaigner in 2012, Romney taxied the rig straight into the airplane hangar where his rally was being staged.
