Biden's first flight on the $217 million presidential helicopter was pushed back after the Pentagon deemed it unreliable in an emergency: report

• Biden's first flight on the new presidential helicopter has been delayed, Bloomberg reported.
• The Pentagon said the chopper wasn't reliable in emergency missions, according to Bloomberg.

The Pentagon delayed President Joe Biden's first flight on the new $217 million presidential helicopter after it deemed the chopper unreliable in an emergency, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.

The Biden administration hasn't made a decision on whether the helicopter can carry out missions because it's still evaluating the aircraft's safety, a US official, who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, told Bloomberg.

The military is replacing the fleet of 11 Sikorsky VH-3D and eight VH-60N helicopters with 23 VH-92 choppers built by Lockheed Martin for $5 billion, Insider previously reported.

The presidential helicopter is "failing to meet the reliability, availability or maintainability threshold requirements," a recent internal report by the Pentagon testing office for top defense officials, which was seen by Bloomberg, said.

The report said the helicopter was "operationally effective" for regular "administrative" flights, such as taking Biden to his country residence, Camp David, according to Bloomberg.

But the aircraft failed to be effective "for the contingency operation mission," in other words, emergency missions, the report said.

The Pentagon testing office said in the report that the helicopter's communication system tended to delay important correspondence at the start of emergency missions and didn't "adequately support timely, continuous and secure communications," according to Bloomberg.

The presidential helicopter was supposed to be declared ready for operations in July, Bloomberg said. This date was pushed back from January, which was already a delay from June 2020, the publication added.

The military still hasn't assigned any missions involving the helicopter, Bloomberg reported.

Maj. Jorge Hernandez, a spokesperson for the Marine-aviation deputy commandant, said the VH-92 program office "cannot speculate as to when" the White House would give approval to start missions, Bloomberg reported.

The White House didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

In March, the military and Lockheed Martin were still trying to resolve the issue of the new helicopter sometimes scorching the lawn when it landed, Bloomberg News reported.

John Dorrian, a spokesman for Lockheed's Sikorsky aircraft division, told Bloomberg, "Sikorsky continues to work closely with our customer to ensure the aircraft meets all operational requirements."