UPDATE (MONDAY, DEC. 4, 2017): PLANS CHANGED AND SLAUGHTER WAS NOT ABLE TO MAKE THE FLIGHT.
When President Trump flies into Salt Lake on Monday, Preston native Jordan Slaughter will be with him.
Slaughter, a 2003 graduate of Preston High School, is a flight crew chief for Air Force One. And yes, he thinks it’s pretty cool.
As a young child, before his family moved to Preston, they lived near Hill Air Force Base– a great place for a young man dreaming about airplanes.
“He’s always wanted to fly,” said his father, John Slaughter. Jordan even completed ground school in an attempt to getting his pilot’s license, but with a child on the way, was unable to afford the rest of his training.
He decided to join the Air Force. He and his high school sweetheart, Dazzlin Burmester, moved to Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, Calif., shortly after their marriage. While there, he worked on the Air Force’s largest airplanes, the C-5 and C-17.
About the time his tour at the base was ending, Slaughter read about an opening as a crew chief at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.
“I thought, ‘what the heck, it’s worth trying,’” he said, but he didn’t think he’d get the job. A year later, after an extensive background check, he was notified that he had the job.
“I was kinda shocked, bur really excited to put another large airframe under my belt,” he said. This VC-25, a Boeing 747, is the Air Force’s third largest airplane.
So Jordan and Dazzlin took their young family to Maryland, where they’ve been the last four years. Today they have three daughters and one son.
His job entails maintenance of Air Force One as part of a 15-man crew of flight chiefs. During his first two years at Andrews Air Force Base, he worked on the presidential plane’s exterior.
“It is massive,” said John, who’s been able to tour the plane while visiting his son. “You don’t even see a fingerprint on it. It’s just beautiful. They must shine it after every flight.”
Now, Jordan is part of the crew that cares for the interior of the plane. He usually doesn’t travel with the president, but due to an Air Force One program that allows crewmembers to travel when the president is visiting near their hometown, Jordan will be on the plane when President Trump arrives in Salt Lake City.
He said he has flown in the airplane on training missions conducted just after Air Force One underwent heavy maintenance checks, but this is his first time to fly with a president and first opportunity to meet President Trump. He met President Obama twice.
But not to misrepresent himself, he chuckled, “It’s one of those things that you do your thing. If he approaches you, you talk to him, and if he doesn’t, you mind your business.”
“I’m pretty excited,” he said, but he’s most excited about seeing family. “I haven’t seen most of them in almost two years.”
Jordan agrees that he’s “livin’ the dream,” for a boy that went to any airshow he could as a kid. He even volunteered to care for the planes in Hill Air Force Base’s museum.
“It’s a long ways from where I thought I’d be and where a lot of people thought I’d be. I’m stoked to have a successful career and making a lot of headway really quick,” he said.
But there are more adventures out there.
“There’s always more. I’m always looking for that next step,” he said. Jordan just applied to pilot Global Hawk, an unmanned surveillance aircraft, for the Air Force.
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