Official AFO Detailing Team Putting Final Preservation Stage on Presidential Jet
ORANGE COUNTY, CA August 5, 2014 — Orange County’s Rigo Santana of Xtreme Xcellence Detailing, has been handpicked out of thousands of detailers nationwide, as a member of the celebrated Air Force One Detailing Team led by master detailer Renny Doyle of Attention to Details. Rigo and the team are headed to Seattle August 11-16 to put the final touches on a 10-year biennial detailing and paint restoration project on the original Air Force One presidential jet. The team will round out the trip by detailing for the first time since its retirement in 2003, one of the world’s first supersonic airliners, the Concorde “Alpha Golf”.
Many of the prestigious 35-man veteran detailing team has made the trip before, but none of them has tackled the Concorde before. “I am honored to be working on such a significant project as detailing Air Force One,” Santana says. “Getting to work on the Concorde is a double bonus for me.”
The Concorde’s substantial length at 204-feet and the iconic shape of its slender delta wings and fuselage are certain to provide a significant challenge this year, just as Doyle’s 10-year AFO restoration project nears its end.
“We used to detail Air Force One every two years, but we have moved into a preservation rather than restoration stage with that historic plane,” says Doyle, whose Attention to Details Network began restoring the presidential jet in 2003. “We will thoroughly detail AFO this year, but after several years of cleaning, restoring the paint, and applying long-lasting protective products, we expect it to be in much better condition this year than in the past. Also, the permanent covered exhibit will be finished next year and the plane will no longer be exposed on the tarmac, like it has the past few years.”
The Concorde Alpha Golf however, will still live on the tarmac. “The team has learned a lot while restoring Air Force One about how destructive torrential rain, elemental contaminants, oxidation, and UV fading can be on the
surface paint of a car or an airplane,” says Santana. “The Concorde has been out of commission since 2003 and without a detailed cleaning or wax for over ten years, the exterior surface must be remarkably vulnerable.”
The Air Force One plane was a flying Oval Office for four U.S. Presidents including Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. The Boeing 707-120 also entertained many international VIPs such as Nikita Khrushchev and Henry Kissinger.
On its final flight from New York to its new home at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, the Concorde “Alpha Golf” broke a speed record of 3 hours, 55 minutes, and 12 seconds, flying at twice the altitude of most commercial jets at 60,000 feet, and traveling at twice the speed of sound.
Doyle says he is proud to share the experience with Santana. “I have carefully selected my team because there is no room for mistakes in detailing these multi-million dollar airplanes,” he says. “I need people who will accept nothing short of perfection and Rigo is one of those people.”
For more information on the 2014 AFO & Concorde Alpha Golf project at the Seattle Museum of Flight, contact Rigo Santana at (714) 472-3001.
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