PM to get own Air Force One in June

New Delhi: Soon, very soon, in fact in June itself, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will get a plush new office, thousands of feet up in the sky. It might not exactly be as high-tech as George W Bush's "Air Force One" or the "Flying Oval Office" but it will be somewhere there.
The first of three wide-bodied VVIP Boeing Business Jets, ordered in October 2005 at a total cost of Rs 937 crore, will touch down at Palam to join IAF's elite Communication Squadron, tasked with ferrying VVIPs, in the second half of June.
"After that, the second and third VVIP jets will come after a gap of three months each. Three sets of IAF air crew (with two pilots, a navigator and a flight engineer in each) have already been trained in Seattle and Texas to fly them," said an official.
Moreover, over 100 ground technicians are also undergoing training in batches in US to handle these specially-configured planes, which come with sophisticated self-protection suites (SPS), encrypted communication facilities and state-of-the-art navigation aids.
The PM, of course, will have a full-fledged executive office and bedroom to himself, apart from a secure communication chamber and facilities to host around 50 guests in the highly-customised aircraft.
16/04/08 Rajat Pandit/Times of India

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Categories: Indian Aviation- In General Apr 2008