The Air Force One Detail: Four Consecutive Years at the Museum of Flight

In June of 2014, I got a call that changed the way I think about what we do.

I'd been selected to join the Air Force One Detailing Team at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. Roughly forty detailers from across the country, all members of Renny Doyle's Detail Mafia, all volunteers. We paid our own flights, our own hotels, our own meals. Nobody was getting paid. You showed up because you earned the spot and because the work mattered.

The aircraft was SAM 970.

The Plane That Started It All

SAM 970 is the first jet aircraft ever to serve as Air Force One. It's a Boeing VC 137B, a modified 707 that was delivered to the Air Force in 1959 to replace President Eisenhower's propeller driven Super Constellation. On August 26, 1959, Eisenhower became the first sitting U.S. president to fly by jet when he boarded this airplane.

After that, SAM 970 carried President Kennedy. It carried President Johnson. It carried President Nixon. It flew Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev across the United States. In the 1970s, Henry Kissinger used it for the secret diplomatic mission to China that reopened relations between the two countries, for the North Vietnamese peace talks, and for Middle East shuttle diplomacy. The plane stayed in active service in the presidential fleet until 1996.

That's the aircraft we were out there polishing.

Working on History

The first two years, 2014 and 2015, the plane was outside. No hangar. No overhang. No cover of any kind. You're standing on scaffolding next to a sixty year old aircraft that carried presidents through the Cold War, and you're fighting sun, wind, and whatever the Pacific Northwest decides to throw at you that day.

The aluminum skin on SAM 970 had decades of oxidation built up from sitting exposed to the elements. Our job was to carefully remove that oxidation without damaging the original paint, restore the finish as close to its original condition as we could, and then lay down heavy protection to carry it through to the next year. This wasn't a quick buff and wax. This was a week of precise, hands on restoration work on surfaces that can never be replaced.

By 2016 and 2017, the plane had been moved into the museum's Aviation Pavilion. An open air hangar with a roof but no walls. It was housed alongside several other historic aircraft, which meant working carefully in tight quarters around irreplaceable machines. Having a roof over our heads made the work more controlled, but the scope hadn't changed. The same oxidation. The same aging aluminum. The same level of care required on every square inch.

It Wasn't Just Air Force One

SAM 970 was the centerpiece, but the team also worked on other aircraft in the museum's collection during that week. I detailed the Concorde Alpha Golf, the British Airways supersonic jet that set the New York to Seattle speed record of three hours and fifty five minutes on its final flight in 2003. I worked on a B 29 Superfortress bomber from World War II. Each aircraft had its own challenges, its own surface conditions, its own history that demanded respect.

When we finished SAM 970, the museum gave us a private tour of the interior. Walking through the cabin of the plane that carried Kennedy, that Kissinger used to secretly meet with Chinese officials, that served as a flying Oval Office for four presidents, that was something I'll never forget. The communications equipment, the layout, the technology they had in the 1960s. You stand in there and you realize this airplane was the most powerful office in the world for decades.

What It Taught Me About the Work We Do Every Day

I came back from Seattle a different detailer. Not because the techniques were so different from what we do in the shop. The chemistry is the same. Oxidation is oxidation. Contamination is contamination. Protection is protection. The tools and products change depending on the surface, but the fundamentals carry over whether you're working on a sixty year old presidential aircraft or a brand new Porsche GT3 in Silver Spring.

What changed was my standard. When you spend a week restoring an airplane that belongs to the American people, where every inch matters and there's no room for shortcuts, that mindset doesn't leave you when you come home. It becomes the baseline.

Four consecutive years on that team reinforced something I already believed but hadn't been tested on at that scale: the difference between good work and great work is maintenance, patience, and an absolute refusal to cut corners. A one day detail can make a car look incredible. But protecting a surface so it still looks incredible a year later, five years later, a decade later, that takes a system. It takes discipline. And it takes someone who understands that the work doesn't end when the car leaves the shop.

That's the same philosophy behind every ceramic coating, every paint correction, and every Coat & Care plan we deliver at Maryland Auto Spa. The aircraft at the Museum of Flight get annual preservation work because that's what it takes to protect something valuable over time. Your vehicle deserves the same approach.

Nineteen Years of That Standard

Maryland Auto Spa has been in Silver Spring since 2007. We've built our reputation on the same principles that earned me a spot on the Air Force One team: precision, patience, and accountability for long term results. We're a certified Modesta installer. We do paint correction, ceramic coating, and paint protection film for clients across the DMV who care about their vehicles the way a museum cares about its collection.

If you've been looking for a shop that treats your car like it matters, we'd like to earn your trust.

(301) 704 6503

MDAutoSpa.com

8931 Brookville Rd, Silver Spring, MD 20910

Maryland Auto Spa is a Modesta Certified Installer specializing in professional ceramic coating, paint correction, paint protection film, and auto detailing in Silver Spring, MD. Serving the DMV including Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Rockville, and Washington, DC. Family owned since 2007.