We’re back to giving elephants to leaders we don’t like
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2025/05/14/qatar-747-trump/
The royals have failed to sell the plane, which was put on the market in 2020, according to an archived listing. Giving it away could save Qatar’s rulers a big chunk of change on maintenance and storage costs, aviation experts told Forbes. Making Trump happy would be an added bonus.
When the plane was bought in 2012, its list price was $367 million, not including the interior, which took three years to complete and likely cost tens of millions of dollars.
The 2020 sales brochure noted that the plane was due for a landing gear overhaul in 2024 and a 12-year check in 2027. A check in which the airplane and engines are taken apart, typically carried out every six to 12 years, can take months to complete and cost millions of dollars.
The plane would need to be stripped down and swept for bugs. Then, unless the administration is willing to accept the risks of lighter security, it would need to be built up to the Air Force’s requirements to serve as an airborne command center, with encrypted communications systems, shielding to protect the electronics from the effects of a nuclear blast and defenses against missiles.
It would take at least five years starting again from scratch, Aboulafia estimates, unless security requirements were relaxed.
Briefly, Qatar has been trying to offload this plane since 2020 but the market is extremely illiquid since its a massive gas guzzler and everyone is moving towards smaller, leaner air travel. Boeing has a couple planes intended to be for Air Force One in the pipeline but Trump is frustrated that they will be delayed to 2028. Cue Qatar seeing the opportunity curry favor with Trump by giving away their outdated junk (which they can’t find a buyer for) which costs millions in storage and maintenance fees.
A check in which the airplane and engines are taken apart, typically carried out every six to 12 years, can take months to complete and cost millions of dollars
This is for a normal plane. Every Air Force 1 (there are a couple) gets fully taken apart and rebuilt about every 6 months. And, the process of vetting and rebuilding this new dingus to become capable to be Air Force 1 will probably cost around a billion dollars. “Millions of dollars” is just the tip suggestion they’ll see on the screen when they go to pay for the absolutely monstrous amount of money this will cost the United States.
Source? That seems incredibly unrealistic to disassemble an entire plane and put it back together every six months. Its far more likely it gets thoroughly inspected every 6 months.
It’s not the whole plane, just major systems. The main cost is the engines, that alone likely costs millions. As it mentioned, there’s other overhauls too, like the landing gear that’s due. These are all on a fixed schedule related to “this many flight-hours” and a certain number of years or months for some parts. The engine overhaul isn’t just “six to twelve months,” it’s “this many flying hours” (which typically comes out to 6-12 months all the same).
I wouldn’t be upset about the overhauls, that’s a normal part of the cost of owning a plane (though it’s harder to sell if it’s due one, because the buyer will have to spend a fuckton of money before flying it).
The upsetting part is that’s is foreign and not up to spec - AKA yeah they’ll have to remove, scan, x-ray and debug every part of that interior and redo the entire electrical and coms system, and install nuclear shielding on the whole-ass plane. Still cheaper than buying a new AF1 but not by as much as one would hope.
It’s a Boeing. Of course they’re trying to ditch it.
It’s the same model of plane as the existing two Air Force One planes. They will tear it down and rebuild it as Air Force One. Trump wants it because it’s a flying palace and believes that he will be able to keep it as is and have his own flying palace. This is cleptocracy manifest.
I have serious doubts that this thing will actually carry a president as Air Force 1 is equipped with quite a lot of equipment that civilian aircraft do not have. Some of it is top secret
Missile Avoidance, Radar, Radios, Aerial Refueling
This is also a potential for general espionage as planes are quite large and there are lots of places to hide things
Not to mention the Type 1 crypto and ECM equipment. There is no way in hell that the US would let Trump walk away with that gear. I read that it would cost from $10 million to $100 million just to sweep the thing for surveillance and tracking devices and to validate that the software hadn’t been modified. Trump just thinks that this is a gift for him that’s going to stay the way it is and then be transferred to him when he leaves office.
After 2029, the plane is to be transferred to the trump library, presumably refitted back to civilian spec, air force paying all costs.
There is no way in hell that the US would let Trump walk away with that gear.
10 years ago, we might have said much the same about the former President of the USA keeping most-secret classified documents unsecured in a bathroom of their resort.
Who knows what may actually happen.
He will be president again in 2028 😨
Exactly though. From an Opsec perspective the only way they let him fly on that thing as a US president is if he pisses someone off
After he is president all it will be for is for people to tour at his library (can you imagine a library with Trump’s name on it?)
Edit: I re-thought an icky joke
Maybe their plan was for it to crash with him in it?