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RE: But what about President Pence...

I got this from a pilot in the 89th Military Airlift Wing at Andrews:

A little-known fact is that the USAF has three reserved calls signs, two of which have been mentioned in this article: Air Force One and Air Force Two. These flights get special unrestricted flight clearance.

For example, they will never be told to hold. They will never have a delay waiting to take off. They will never be vectored to avoid other traffic-—other traffic is vectored to avoid them. Essentially, they operate at all times as any other aircraft would be treated if it declared an emergency-—except there’s no such thing as an emergency takeoff! Controllers know these call signs and are required to give the very top priority handling.

The third call sign is Executive One Foxtrot. Think about the “One” and think about “Foxtrot” standing for “F,” which is the first letter in family and now you see that it’s used when any member of the First Family is on board.

They used this call sign to carry First Ladies Rosalyn Carter and Betty Ford, as well as just the Ford children traveling on their own. It gets the same special handling by controllers.

ALSO, Beyond the fact that “Air Force One” is a designation used only for the plane carrying the president, the vice-president is actually important enough to rate his own call sign— the incredibly unimaginative “Air Force Two” — in addition to his own plane, a Boeing C-32.

As you would imagine, THE VICE-PRESIDENT ALMOST NEVER SETS FOOT ON AIR FORCE ONE IN ANY SENSE.

This is primarily a matter of unofficial policy (and common sense) as the VP is almost never on the same flight as the president for continuity-of-government issues. At the same time, the VP is rarely able to make use of either of the VC-25As that are colloquially considered to be “Air Force One” since the president is often using one while the other one is either working in a support role or undergoing maintenance.