Bradlee Dean, the rather dim evangelist who is suing Rachel Maddow and my old employer, seems to have discovered the startling fact that presidents travel by plane today instead of horse and buggy and that things are more expensive now than they were in colonial times. And this fact has left him spouting a lot of nonsense.
In light of Obama’s recent visit to North Carolina, an investigative reporter did research to see how much taxpayers spend whenever the president leaves the White House by plane. He found that it costs $179,750 to fly Air Force One for just one hour! That expense is only for fuel, maintenance and sundries; it does not include all of the staff and security personnel that accompany every move the president makes.
Making the clear distinction between then and now, George Washington bears the cross, while this president wears the crown.
Uh, yeah. You see, planes cost more to run than horses. You can’t just feed the plane a bag of oats. This does not make this president, or any president, a king because he rides in a plane. I bet Obama’s shoes cost more to make than Washington’s too. I’m sure our crack detective is on the case for his next silly column. Of course, I bet those 80s-style Adidas track suits that Bradlee Dean likes so much cost more than Washington’s clothes too.
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YankeeCynic
June 26, 2012 at 1:14 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I always love attacks like this. The right, at least according to its members, are supposed to be the ones tough on defense. Yet they always freak out when the President uses Air Force One.
The president travels in that plane because it’s a national command post, used to communicate with the armed forces and other federal entities in an emergency. That’s why President Bush went airborne in it during 9/11. “We’re tough on defense, but we want the national command authority to ride around on a Greyhound Bus.”
It’s almost like wingnuts only use attacks like this on people that oppose them or something.
dingojack
June 26, 2012 at 1:33 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Uh Bradley – $179,750 in 2010 dollars is $6,450 in 1774 dollars (based on the standad of living) or $354 (based on the relative wage a unskilled worker would need to buy the commodity). The average disposable US wage of $40,560 would be $1,450 (Historic Standard of Living) or $79.80 (Unskilled Workers’ Income).
So how much, exactly, did Georgie spend on his horses, messengers, command staff, tents, signallers and etc.?
Dingo
Ace of Sevens
June 26, 2012 at 1:35 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
That figure sounds really dubious if it doesn’t include staff. Are they amortizing the cost of building the plane over a week’s worth of flights?
imrryr
June 26, 2012 at 1:36 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
After reading the article, it’s clear that Bradlee Dean can’t write for shit:
I think he copied this verbatim from a 6th grade book report, or he graduated from the Sarah Palin School of American History.
slc1
June 26, 2012 at 1:39 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I vaguely recall that, during the gas shortage in 1979, then President Carter flew in a commercial flight. I assume that the guy with with football was in the adjacent seat.
jimmiraybob
June 26, 2012 at 1:57 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It was said of the first president of the United States, George Washington, that he was hailed as “first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”
During the Revolutionary War, George Washington didn’t send someone else to go in his stead; he took responsibility and went himself ….
Well, first and second of all, GW was not president during the revolutionary war and he did not send himself. As to the rest……..really, I couldn’t go any further.
d cwilson
June 26, 2012 at 1:57 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Every time a wingnut criticizes Obama for doing something that was common practice among his predescessors, I read the following subtext:
“How dare that n*gger act like he’s the president!”
lclane2
June 26, 2012 at 2:07 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
But surely George W Bush must have used horses and oats.
YankeeCynic
June 26, 2012 at 2:09 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The other thing that this loon is ignoring is that POTUS actually PAYS for his campaign staff to follow him by cutting the government a check for the equivilent cost of a seat. The only people who POTUS doesn’t pay for are the military and other essential personnel that travel with him ( and would if he was moving by ground or some other means).
This hasn’t been a problem since President Carter, who started the whole reimbursement program. In fact, presidents are paying more. It used to be the cost of a regular airplane seat. Now it’s the price of a seat on a comped able charters flight.
Ben P
June 26, 2012 at 2:41 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ths is a wild ass guess, but I bet that does include staff as well as other expenses. I found a fox article that is titled “Military Pegs Hourly Air Force One Cost at $181,000.
my guess as to how they arrive at that number? They pulled the budget of the presidential airlift group which is responsible for maintaining and operating the planes, then divided by some figure relating to how often air force one is in the air.
A couple sites I’ve looked at suggest the hourly cost of flying a 747 is somewhere in the 50-60,000 range, most of that being fuel. And anyone who’s ever worked with aircraft knows the only thing more expensive than flying an aircraft all the time is having an aircraft sitting on the ground.
If you figure the cost of maintaining a specialized 747 for the president to fly it an average of say 1200 hours a year, $189,000 per flight hour doesn’t sound terribly outrageous.
Assume for example that Air Force 1 puts in 1200 flight hours in a year. That’s a lot of flying but not quite the level a dedicated commercial jet might get. (which is as much as 2000-2500 hours per year).
At $189,000 per flight hour that would mean that flying, storing and maintaining air force one (staff included) costs about $225 million a year. That’s a lot of money of course, but doesn’t strike me as absurd.
Ben P
June 26, 2012 at 2:49 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I also just noted that there are in fact TWO aircraft used by the president as well as a smaller jet used by the vice president.
Maintaining 2 747 sized aircraft would substantially increase the operating cost.
Doug Little
June 26, 2012 at 2:53 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
A 747 uses 1 gallon a second, so that’s 3600 gallons an hour. The current price of jet fuel is 272.3 cents/gal. So the fuel cost for the plane assuming current prices and specs is a little under $10,000/hour. The ground costs are roughly 70% of the airborne costs, but this would refer to a plane in continuous rotation which AF1 is definitely not. I tracked down an article about a storage facility that charges $60,000 dollars a year to store 747′s that includes all maintenance costs to keep the plane ready to fly.
So unless the Prez is making it rain Cristal and caviar on a bunch of high end hookers whilst lighting pre-embargo Cubans with 100 dollar bills. I can’t see how this figure is remotely close.
I think they have just figured the 70% airborne cost for all the ground time that it sits, which would be wrong as it is not in continuous rotation like a commercial airliner.
Area Man
June 26, 2012 at 3:07 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“That figure sounds really dubious if it doesn’t include staff.”
Agreed. The idea that a 747 consumes $180k worth of fuel and maintenance each hour is absurd on its face. You can only get a figure that high if you add in fixed costs such as hanger fees, personnel, associated military costs, etc., basically all the stuff that you have to pay for anyway no matter how infrequently you fly the plane. Which means ironically, the per-hour cost goes down the more the president travels on it.
But that’s all beside the point. The wingnuts, as is typical, have chosen to raise a big stink out of something that costs an insignificant fraction of the budget, that is necessary to ensure the safety of the president, and that former Republican presidents never hesitated to avail themselves of. So they exercise their stupidity, evil, and hypocrisy all in one stroke.
yoav
June 26, 2012 at 3:15 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
George Washington also saved money by having slaves take care of his horses while Obama is wasting taxpayer money by employing free people who need to be paid.
Area Man
June 26, 2012 at 3:20 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Even that number sounds much too high. For a 5 hour trip, an airline would have to charge $500 per seat just to break even.
I don’t think that the $189,000 per hour is unreasonable if you take the total cost of maintaining AF1 and divide it by the relatively small number of hours it’s in the air. But that of course was not what Dean was doing.
YankeeCynic
June 26, 2012 at 3:26 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
In fact, this current Air Force One configuration was ushered in by President Reagan, AKA Republican Jesus. And he did so based on the same reasons we keep them around now: these aircraft can perform similar functions to NAOC, AKA the doomsday planes. In other words, if there is a crisis it makes sense to have a command post aircraft close to the President to get him or her airborne and in contact with the relevant entities. That’s hard to do if he’s flying about on commercial air. It also makes more sense than keeping several bunkers alerted, and safer too.
Hell, I’d memory serves Air Force One is also mid-air refueling capable, which is another advantage.
Doug Little
June 26, 2012 at 4:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
A couple sites I’ve looked at suggest the hourly cost of flying a 747 is somewhere in the 50-60,000 range, most of that being fuel.
That’s high.
AF1 has
4 × General Electric CF6-80C2B1F turbofans, 250 kN each.
1 Gallon of jet fuel weighs 3080g.
SFC at cruise for a CF6-80C2B1F is 17.1 g/kN.s
From what I have read your engines at cruise are operating at 20% of max.
So plugging in the numbers we we get 17.1 * 250 * 4 * 0.2 / 3080 = 1.25 Gal/sec = 4509 Gal/hour.
At 272.3 cents/gal we get a total of $12,278 in fuel costs per hour.
Doug Little
June 26, 2012 at 4:17 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Another unknown is what is the price that the military pays for fuel? I used the global average price paid at the refinery in my calculations.
fastlane
June 26, 2012 at 4:40 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Doug Little, I don’t think your info on engine fuel consumption is correct. At Cruise, engines operate closer to 80% power, or even slightly more.
I can’t get into specifics from information I have available, but I can look to see what’s public domain info (I work for Boeing).
Doug Little
June 26, 2012 at 4:45 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Another way to look at it is the max range, cruise speed and fuel weight it can carry.
fuel = 164142kg
range = 13000km
speed = 925km/h
This gives us roughly 11679kg of fuel/hour = 3792 Gal/hour. So it looks like my even my estimate above is even a little large. Given the capacity of the plane it works out to be $10,325/hour in fuel.
Doug Little
June 26, 2012 at 4:47 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@fastlane,
Cool, we supply to Boeing.
Doug Little
June 26, 2012 at 5:19 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@fastlane,
Yeah I came across the 80% figure but it intuitively doesn’t seem correct. When you are on a plane you hear the engines throttle way back when you get to cruise altitude. Also air friction at 10,000m is a hell of a lot less than it is at SL. The density of the air at 10,000m is 34% of the sea level value. Drag is proportional to density so we only have to overcome a third of the drag at sea level assuming the same speed (I did quote the SFC at cruise which is almost double the SFC at sea-level). Another factor is velocity, takeoff is around 280km/h this obviously affects drag in a big way as it proportional to the square of velocity. I would have to graph drag vs altitude given the change in density and change in speed to get an idea. Also when you look at the capacity, range and cruising speed of the plane 80% figure doesn’t work out.
Ben P
June 26, 2012 at 5:55 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Looked at the two sources I referenced earlier again. (it seems when I post links my posts go into some moderation que and I never see them).
Most of them are actually talking about cost estimates to attempt to charter a large commercial aircraft like a 747. Assuming the fuel calculations here are correct that might not be all that far off. Assuming that any charter flight of a plane that size might be a couple hours at most you’d have $20,000+ in fuel, add in other marginal costs, and the company accounting for their fixed costs, and profit that doesn’t seem like it would be terribly out of the ballpark.
It doesn’t really change the overall point either. If you figure the presidential airlift group is maintaining 2 747 sized aircraft with a lot of special gear + a smaller jet and flying them oh, say 1000 or 1200 hours a year, a budget of $200m+ really doesn’t seem all that outlandish.
Doug Little
June 26, 2012 at 6:31 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@fastlane,
Just graphed it and it turns out that drag is 3.7x greater at cruise speed and altitude vs takeoff speed and sea level so that can’t be it. What am I missing????
jnorris
June 26, 2012 at 10:00 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Doug Little in #24, what you are missing is airplanes are not mentioned anywhere in the Bible and so they are an insult to Christian God because they fly near the threshold of heaven. Only an Atheist Muslim President would use a clearly satanic machine.
dingojack
June 27, 2012 at 12:37 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
jnorris – and they’re got metal* in them, god hatez & fearz teh iron!
Dingo
—–
* Well yes I know, but we’re talking fundies, to them metals are metals.
Perhaps god’s siderophobia comes of his addiction to iron-y. :)
reverendrodney
June 27, 2012 at 1:21 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Bradlee Dean,
another wingnut musician.
Like Pat Boone, Hank Williams Jr.
and Ted Nugent.
Nothing in the right-wing realm smacks of quality.
Stacey C.
June 27, 2012 at 11:05 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Clearly he’s never read the book George Washington’s Expense Account. Washington got Congress to spend a *lot* of money on him during the Revolution. He was a very shrewd man. Not sure about his presidency but he certainly wasn’t out there using his own money while fighting. Oh, and as pointed out above…slaves. I know he’s not actually grounded in reality but I hate when people make historical arguments when they have no idea about the history.
Nibi
June 27, 2012 at 9:11 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Doug Little
It’s a simple matter of weight ratios. Are we talking about an African or European 747?
birgerjohansson
June 28, 2012 at 5:45 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Doug Little, fastlane,
The total drag is the sum of parasite drag (ordinary friction) and induced drag (vortices at the wingtips).
Induced drag gets higher when the wings must “work harder”, with a steeper angle of attack.
This happens during takeoff (low airspeed means low lifting capacity means wings must have greater angle of attack).
This also happens at high altitude (thin air means less lift means the wing smust have a steeper angle).
At high airspeed plus low altitude you get enough lift even if the nose is in the horizontal plane.
One way to reduce induced drag is to have a wide wing span. That is why both (slow) sailplanes and (high-flying) U-2s have a very big wingspan.
My guess is that the total drag at altitude would be between 40 and 50 per cent of drag at sea level.
Bradlee Dean Discovers the 21st Century | Dispatches from the … | Charter Airplane
June 27, 2012 at 4:16 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
[...] here to see the original: Bradlee Dean Discovers the 21st Century | Dispatches from the … Posted in 12, 2012, air, airplane, an, at, charter, charters, CO, de, ER, flight, in, NC, no, on, [...]