Originally Posted by
WHBM
How on earth can two 747s incur a loss of USD 1.5bn ? That's surely more than they were sold for.
These aircraft are stuffed with electronics and everything is custom made, but still has to be tested and qualified. Integrating the electronics is a software intensive task.
So the price of the hulls and engines are almost irrelevant, except that the engines are also modified to allow longer refueled flights.
Agree entirely that signing up to do this on a fixed price basis was foolish, but iirc, they were really determined to keep Boeing as the builder of Air Force 1.