09/25/2026
This Lockheed Constellation was the first ever Air Force One plane. Her name is Columbine II, and the reason the call sign exists at all is this exact airplane.
In 1953, President Eisenhower was flying aboard Columbine II under the call sign Air Force 8610 when controllers confused it with Eastern Air Lines flight 8610. After that incident, Eisenhower's pilot, Colonel William Draper, proposed a rule: any aircraft carrying the president would use one unmistakable name. Air Force One.
Columbine II carried Eisenhower across the Atlantic, the first transatlantic flight by a sitting president. With its triple tail and curved fuselage, the Constellation is often called the most beautiful airliner ever built.
Then America forgot her.
She became the only presidential aircraft ever sold to a private party. She passed from owner to owner, sprayed crops, and ended up parked in the Arizona desert.
Years later, researchers traced her tail number and realized what she was. Volunteers restored her once, and she flew at airshows in the early 1990s. But no one stepped up to keep her. She flew for the last time in 2003, then sat parked in the desert for 13 years.
In 2015, Dynamic Aviation founder Karl Stoltzfus bought her. His team made 8 trips into the desert, weeks at a time, repairing her just enough for 1 flight. In March 2016, Columbine II lifted off from Arizona and flew home to Bridgewater, Virginia, her first flight in 13 years. That flight was only meant to bring her home: she was barely airworthy, and far from restored.
The full restoration is happening now: stripped to bare metal, rebuilt by hand to fly regularly again. Karl Stoltzfus passed away in November 2020, but his team continued. The aircraft was donated to a nonprofit, First Air Force One, and under executive director Phil Douglas, craftsmen are doing the work piece by piece. This year's update shows the cockpit stripped and prepared for its original green paint, the interior being rebuilt, and the engines being assembled.
Out of 856 Constellations ever built, only 2 are believed airworthy in the world today. When Columbine II flies, she will be the 3rd, and the only one that ever carried an American president.
The Stoltzfus family does not consider themselves her owners. They call themselves stewards. They call her America's Airplane.
