Air Force Two
Air traffic control call sign of any US Air Force aircraft carrying the vice president of the US
Air Force Two is the air traffic control designated call sign held by any United States Air Force aircraft carrying the vice president of the United States, but not the president. The term is often associated with the Boeing C-32, a modified 757 which is most commonly used as the vice president's transport. Other 89th Airlift Wing aircraft, such as the Boeing C-40 Clipper, C-20B, C-37A, and C-37B, have also served in this role. The VC-25A, the aircraft most often used by the president as Air Force One, has also been used by the vice president as Air Force Two.
History
Richard Nixon was one of the first senior officials in American government to travel internationally via jet aircraft on official business, taking a Boeing VC-137A Stratoliner on his visit to the Soviet Union in July 1959 for the Kitchen Debates as Eisenhower's vice president.
Domestically, non-presidential VIP travel still relied on the prop powered Convair VC-131 Samaritan aircraft until Nelson Rockefeller was named Gerald Ford's vice president in 1974. Rockefeller personally owned a Grumman Gulfstream II jet that he preferred to the much slower Convair; Rockefeller's Gulfstream II then used the "Executive Two" callsign while he was in office. This would prompt the 89th Airlift Wing's acquisition of three McDonnell Douglas VC-9Cs in 1975, adding to their three VC-137s jets used for senior executive international travel.
Prior senior executive aircraft included the former presidential Douglas VC-54 Skymaster, Douglas VC-118A, and Lockheed C-121 Constellations, held in reserve as back-up aircraft for the newer aircraft designated for presidential travel.
Design
Aircraft allocated for use by the vice president and senior executives authorized to travel under the Special Air Mission designation operated by the 89th Airlift Wing can be distinguished from the distinctive Raymond Loewy Air Force One livery by the lack of the steel blue cheatline and cap over the cockpit.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Air Force Two” as air traffic control call sign of any US Air Force aircraft carrying the vice president of the US. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as air traffic control call sign of any US Air Force aircraft carrying the vice president of the US. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2743840. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1959, 1974 and 1975.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Air Force Two” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.