US president-elect, Joe Biden, and his family arrived in Washington D.C. on Tuesday ahead of his inauguration as the country’s 46th president on a chartered flight after the outgoing president, Donald Trump, refused to sanction the release of an Air Force Jet to convey them.
Biden and his family flew the short trip from his home state of Delaware to the Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on a private Boeing 737. As the chartered plane taxied around the runway of the military airport, Biden saw an idle Air Force Boeing 757 on the tarmac.
The snub was the latest in Trump’s defiant refusal to acknowledge his successor. In contrast, the Obama administration sent an Air Force plane to New York for the Trumps’ in January 2017.
Just as the Biden family landed, the White House released a 20-minute farewell video from Trump, which did not mention his soon-to-be successor by name or congratulate him on his victory.
On Wednesday, the Trumps’ will fly out of Washington without greeting the Bidens, with the president holding his own farewell ceremony at Andrews before getting on Air Force One to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
The Trumps’ flight to Mar-a-Lago has been timed to ensure that the outgoing US President is still in command of the Boeing executive 747 Air Force One plane shortly before Biden is sworn-in at 12pm EST.
