President Trump boarded Air Force One on July 8 as a ruse.
On the final day of the NATO summit in Turkey, Mr. Trump walked up the stairway to the plane that was supposed to carry him on the first leg of his journey home. He briefly waved to the cameras and disappeared inside one of the iconic, baby blue 747s that have served as Air Force One for decades. Then he secretly exited the aircraft, hidden inside a catering container.
Mr. Trump was next taken to a military jet for a clandestine flight out of Turkey. The 747, filled with journalists, White House officials, aides and others, took off despite what was deemed a credible threat from Iran against Air Force One.
It was an extraordinary subterfuge, aimed at protecting an American president who has been in Iran’s cross hairs for years.
The latest threat had emerged as Mr. Trump began his final day in Turkey. According to two officials with knowledge of the threat, U.S. intelligence picked up multiple streams of information overnight: that the Iranians knew specifically where Mr. Trump was staying, including which floor, and that someone in the vicinity of the NATO summit had been spotted with a shoulder-fired missile.
U.S. officials immediately began concocting a plan. Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was integral to assessing the threat and deciding how to respond. General Caine is no stranger to subterfuge: His last job was Pentagon liaison to the C.I.A., and he helped devise the diversion tactics during Operation Midnight Hammer, when U.S. forces struck Iran’s nuclear sites in June 2025.
Not everyone who rode on the plane without Mr. Trump was in the dark. Secretary of State Marco Rubio knew about the threat and flew on the old plane after helping to plan the operation to spirit the president out of Turkey, according to two U.S. officials. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic.
Other senior officials who traveled on the plane without the president included Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent; Steven Cheung, the White House communications director; and Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s deputy chief of staff; as well as several other White House staff, according to a senior U.S. official. It was not clear whether they all knew about the threat.
The elaborate deception — which was first reported by The Washington Post, and which ended without any harm coming to either Air Force One or the military jet carrying Mr. Trump — raised questions about the security trade-offs in protecting the commander in chief.
Whether or not the passengers on the plane that Mr. Trump left behind knew about the threat, they were exposed to risks that the Secret Service deemed too great for the president to face.
On Tuesday evening, in his first public comments about the secret evacuation, Mr. Trump said the decision was not his.
“It’s really just up to Secret Service,” he told reporters after returning from Ohio. “I just follow what they like to do. So I go by Secret Service and the military. They wanted me to go in a different flight, a different plane for safety.”
Here’s how this all came about.
Trump tells reporters he will fly on the old Air Force One
Before leaving the summit, Mr. Trump posted on social media that, for “old time’s sake,” he would fly out on the old Air Force One instead of the luxury 747-8 donated by Qatar that he had flown in on.
He later told reporters that he was sending the donated plane to Europe to “two or three of the big bases” to show it off to the military there.
Trump boards the old Air Force One
Mr. Trump then boarded at the front of the older plane in view of cameras and news organizations. Journalists traveling with him, including the New York Times photographer Doug Mills, boarded the rear of the plane and were instructed to keep their window shades down.
What was not known at the time is that Mr. Trump appears to have been quickly taken off that plane via a catering container on the opposite side of the plane. He was then taken to a third plane, which he flew in secret to Britain. That third plane appears to have been a military variant of a Boeing 757 known as a C-32 A, which was parked adjacent to the 747 Air Force One on the tarmac in Turkey.
What we know about Trump switching planes
Video of the departure process shows a catering container on a truck on the other side of the old Air Force One pull away and then drive alongside the C-32 A. Footage reviewed by The New York Times does not have a continuously clear view of the catering container, but it appears that the container is moved by truck from the front of the old Air Force One to the rear of the C-32 A.
A second catering container at the rear of the old Air Force One is also present, but footage shows it being driven away from the old Air Force One.
It does not appear to interact with the C-32 A. The old Air Force One takes off before the C-32 A.
The planes arrive in England
Mr. Trump’s new Air Force One, the Qatari-donated plane, arrived hours before the other two planes at the Mildenhall military base in England. According to livestreams and photographs from that night captured by hobbyist plane watchers and reviewed by The Times, it arrived at 6:26 p.m. local time. The C-32 A arrived at 10:20 p.m., and the old Air Force One arrived nine minutes later, at 10:29 p.m.
There is no recorded flight data for this C-32 A, since its transmitters were not broadcasting its flight path and coordinates. Flight watchers who listened to air traffic control transmissions that night noted on a flight monitoring message board and on social media that the plane used the call sign RCH18 (Reach 18).
Harry Moulton, an aviation photographer who was at Mildenhall and listening to air traffic control transmissions on July 8, told The Times that Air Force One instructed traffic controllers to have the C-32 A land first.
Upon arrival at Mildenhall, Mr. Trump was then secretly moved back to the old Air Force One. According to a U.S. official on Monday, Mr. Trump was taken by vehicle from the plane that he had arrived on to the old Air Force One. He then boarded it through a different entrance and disembarked in view of reporters as he typically would.
He could be seen walking across the tarmac, where he boarded the plane donated by Qatar and flew back to Washington.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting.
The post A Catering Truck and a Decoy Plane: How Trump’s Great Escape Unfolded appeared first on New York Times.
