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In a discussion about the FAA’s air-traffic system, which is in the midst of a decades-long upgrade known as NextGen, Trump said: “And I can tell you that a lot of the new equipment that’s ordered is obsolete the day they order it. And that’s according to people that know, including my pilot.”

Later, he said: “My pilot — he’s a smart guy and he knows what’s going on.” Trump also said the agency’s head should be a pilot after being told then-FAA Administrator Michael Huerta wasn’t one.

Photo by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Dunkin said in the Smithsonian documentary that he’d started flying before he could drive. His father was a military flier and “once I had a chance to go solo I was hooked and I decided that’s what I wanted to do,” he said.

Trump bought now-defunct Eastern Airlines’ routes between Boston, New York and Washington and renamed it after himself. Trump Shuttle operated only a few years before it went bankrupt and was purchased in 1992. It eventually became part of USAir, which is now part of American Airlines Group Inc.

Dunkin had been a pilot at Eastern before moving to the Trump operation, according to people who know him. For most of the years since then, Dunkin was the person who made Trump’s private fleet run, from ensuring the gold fixtures sparkled to taking care that maintenance was performed.

When Trump announced he was running for president, Dunkin transformed the corporate flight department with five aircraft, including the 757, into a veritable airline, he wrote in an article for Professional Pilot Magazine.

Over almost two years, it flew more than 700 flight legs to more than 200 cities, he said. All of that was accomplished by adding just two fixed-wing pilots to the two that were already there, including Dunkin, he wrote.

“Candidates that run for president normally hire an entire airline but that is not how we roll,” he said.