A check in which the airplane and engines are taken apart, typically carried out every six to 12 years, can take months to complete and cost millions of dollars
This is for a normal plane. Every Air Force 1 (there are a couple) gets fully taken apart and rebuilt about every 6 months. And, the process of vetting and rebuilding this new dingus to become capable to be Air Force 1 will probably cost around a billion dollars. “Millions of dollars” is just the tip suggestion they’ll see on the screen when they go to pay for the absolutely monstrous amount of money this will cost the United States.
Source? That seems incredibly unrealistic to disassemble an entire plane and put it back together every six months. Its far more likely it gets thoroughly inspected every 6 months.
It’s not the whole plane, just major systems. The main cost is the engines, that alone likely costs millions. As it mentioned, there’s other overhauls too, like the landing gear that’s due. These are all on a fixed schedule related to “this many flight-hours” and a certain number of years or months for some parts. The engine overhaul isn’t just “six to twelve months,” it’s “this many flying hours” (which typically comes out to 6-12 months all the same).
I wouldn’t be upset about the overhauls, that’s a normal part of the cost of owning a plane (though it’s harder to sell if it’s due one, because the buyer will have to spend a fuckton of money before flying it).
The upsetting part is that’s is foreign and not up to spec - AKA yeah they’ll have to remove, scan, x-ray and debug every part of that interior and redo the entire electrical and coms system, and install nuclear shielding on the whole-ass plane. Still cheaper than buying a new AF1 but not by as much as one would hope.