Saying only a “stupid person” would turn down a free, highly-modified 747-8i airliner, President Donald Trump on Monday doubled down on his justification for receiving a donated jet from Qatar to serve as a presidential plane until Boeing completes delivery of two future VC-25B Air Force One aircraft.
However, the deal being negotiated raises a number of glaring questions. Ethical and legal concerns over Qatar’s ‘gifting’ of the jet have already been highlighted across the mainstream media. But the question of whether the very luxurious aircraft, supposedly worth $400 million, will meet even stripped-down operational and security requirements for transporting a sitting U.S. president is just as pressing. The actual price of making this interim Air Force One aircraft happen is another unanswered question — it will be far from free — as is the supposed timeline for realizing it. Finally, Qatar has actually gifted a luxurious 747 to a key ally before, an act that also raised a lot of eyebrows. Regardless, just getting any 747-8i in the USAF’s hands could be a good thing, even if it never actually flies in its intended role.
“…if we can get a 747, as a contribution to our Defense Department to use during a couple of years while they’re building the other ones, I think that was a very nice gesture,” Trump told reporters at the White House Monday morning. “Now, I could be a stupid person to say, ‘Oh no, we don’t want a free plane.’ We give free things out, we’ll take one too. And, it helps us out, because, again, we’re talking about we have 40-year-old aircraft. The money we spend, the maintenance we spend on those planes to keep them tippy-top, is astronomical. You wouldn’t believe it. So I think it’s a great gesture from Qatar. I appreciate it very much.”
The president also pushed back on concerns that accepting the jet would be a conflict of interest.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt previously said that any donation would meet all legal requirements for accepting such an offer.
Trump’s comments today came in response to an ABC News report that he will use the aircraft as his presidential plane until shortly before he leaves office in January 2029, when ownership will be transferred to the foundation overseeing his yet-to-be-built presidential library.
“I thought it was a great gesture, and it’s something that was done by Ronald Reagan,” Trump said of the donation offer and subsequent plans for the aircraft after he leaves office. “They actually decommissioned the plane, and he put it in this library, and it actually has made the library – I think a Boeing 707 – it’s actually made the library more successful.”
It’s worth noting that the VC-137 that sits in the Reagan Library served for decades across multiple administrations, and had used up its service life. It was not procured by a single president and retired at the end of their term to serve as a display piece in their library.
Trump added that his presidential library would maintain possession of the aircraft, which he would not use after his presidency expires.
The idea of an ‘interim’ presidential aircraft stems from delays in the current effort to replace the two current VC-25As — the oldest of which has been flying for 35 years — which are based on the 747-200 model. The VC-25B program traces its roots back to the late 2000s, and then-President-Elect Donald Trump had previously called for its cancellation back in 2017.
The 747-200s in any configuration have all but disappeared from the skies, meaning finding parts and general support for the type is getting harder and more expensive with each passing year. The USAF also flies four E-4B airborne command post aircraft based on the same design, which are in the process of being replaced themselves by a larger number of 747-8is. Trump noted the maintenance issues during his Monday press conference, without offering specifics.
The VC-25As are the most expensive aircraft to fly in the USAF’s portfolio, costing roughly $178,000 per hour based on numbers from four years ago. That price has only gone up, likely significantly.
The designated replacements for these jets, known as Air Force One when the president is aboard, are the two VC-25Bs that Boeing is converting from 747-8i airliners, which you can read more about here.
The conversion process has taken far longer than initially anticipated, with estimates that the new jets would not be ready until 2029, after Trump leaves office. However, a top Air Force official testified last week that the flying branch is working with the White House and Boeing to speed things up.
“Recent estimates that we’ve gotten from Boeing show a significant improvement in that date,” Darlene Costello, the Air Force’s acting acquisitions chief, testified before the House Armed Services Committee. “We are looking at the requirements that are being potentially traded off to get to that date. And so I would not necessarily guarantee that date, but they’re proposing to bring it into [20]27 if we can come to an agreement on the requirements changes that can get us to that point…We’re working with the White House on what’s acceptable from a capability standpoint for those aircraft, and we’ll refine the date accordingly.”
The Air Force has “also relieved some of the security requirements for construction, for a production facility for a period of time,” Costello added. “It will not be a permanent relief, but that has enabled Boeing to be more efficient and productive in assembling the aircraft and … getting their mechanics to do the work, but we’re down to a few remaining issues that we have to work through, and we will hope to close out in the very near future and then we will have, I believe, a better estimate on the schedule.”
In her written testimony, Costello chalked up the delays to “interiors supplier transition, manpower limitations, and wiring design completion.”
“We are committed to replacing the 35-year-old VC-25A with reliable air transport equipped with communications capability and security equal to that of the White House,” Costello wrote.
All these delays have led to Boeing recording losses of more than $2 billion on the program, the contract for which was negotiated on a fixed-price basis. The aircraft, which were obtained second-hand, were already slated to be the most expensive fixed-wing aircraft ever built when you factor in the total program cost.
Converting any aircraft to one that will allow a president safe travel, with highly secure communications and the ability to conduct continuity of government operations in the event of a major contingency, including a nuclear exchange, is a very complex process.
Earlier this year, reports were circulating on how Trump was looking at alternative options for the next Air Force One, including how he had reportedly inspected the former Qatari jet at Palm Beach International, Florida. As you can read about in this previous in-depth piece, the 12-year-old aircraft belonged to the ruling family of Qatar, but was subsequently marketed for sale. No buyers have taken on the Jumbo Jet, with its equally supersized operational costs.
According to a report from business news channel CNBC, L3Harris Technologies is set to work on modifications to the former Qatari 747. The company on Monday declined to comment.
As we previously reported about efforts to speed up delivery of the VC-25Bs, Elon Musk’s visit to the Boeing facility in San Antonio, Texas, last December gave an indication of what this process might look like.
In an interview with CNBC to discuss another disastrous quarter for Boeing’s financial results in January, Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg acknowledged that the company had talked with Musk.
“The president wants the airplane sooner, and so we’re working with Elon and the team to figure what can we do to pull up the schedule of that aircraft,” Ortberg told CNBC. He called the talks with Musk “constructive.”
In addition to complaining about the former security clearance concerns, Musk reportedly also criticized the amount of time built into the program for flight testing.
“The idea was that we could just strip out a lot of the military stuff, just give the president a good-looking new airplane to fly in with commercial capabilities and maybe some minimal military upgrades,” an unnamed former Pentagon official told The New York Times, after Musk’s apparent visit to Boeing in San Antonio.
The Air Force, White House, and Boeing declined comment on Monday on the compromises being discussed to move the VC-25B program along at a faster pace. The Pentagon deferred questions about the Qatari jet to the White House.
It’s one thing to hasten the conversion process. It is quite something else to ensure that the end product will meet the strict requirements for keeping the president connected, including with the National Command Authority (NCA), even in a dire crisis. The ability for the president to connect with the NCA anywhere and at any time underpins the credibility of America’s nuclear deterrent. It is not seen as a negotiable item in terms of requirements. Hardening the aircraft from the electromagnetic effects of nuclear explosions, defending it against a multitude of threats — especially surface-to-air missiles — and playing a role in the critical ‘continuity of government’ mission are all aspects of Air Force One’s requirements. Many secondary modifications, including vast power generation capabilities and structural tweaks, are needed to integrate these and other features.
As we have addressed before, the ex-Qatari 747-8i is nowhere close to being suited for fulfilling these demanding requirements as it sits. And while the aircraft has a very impressive and expensive ‘royal flight’ interior, creature comforts are just one element of what makes Air Force One accomplish its mission. With that in mind, while the aircraft may be free, the cost to modify it into the Air Force One role, even in a stripped-down manner, would be far more than its supposed (and inflated) $400M ‘retail’ price tag. All these systems, once fully integrated, would also need to be tested, which goes beyond typical flight testing. Much of the interior will need to be ripped out and reinstalled to accomplish the necessary modifications.
All this would be done for a one-off aircraft with an extremely limited service life. Accomplishing this quickly just so Trump can use it for a couple of years — if that is even possible, which it likely is not — makes little logical sense. Then there is the risk taken on by drastically reducing requirements for this interim aircraft, which is a whole other issue, that will be defined by its final configuration. Maybe the jet could be relegated to domestic, lower-risk travels, but then the question goes back to what is the point?
On the other hand, with the 747 now well out of production, getting a ‘free’ spare airframe that will be stripped for parts to support not just the future VC-25B fleet but also the larger fleet of at least four (and likely more) E-4C Survivable Airborne Operations Center aircraft the USAF is now in the process of converting would be a very good thing.
Ultimately, however, as president, it will be up to Trump to decide what the security, safety, and communications requirements will be for any new Air Force One.
Trump’s interest in modifying the VC-25B program dates back to his first term, when he wanted to see the aircraft wear an entirely new red, white, and blue livery. That change was ultimately cancelled by the Biden administration.
“The Air Force previously displayed a red, white, and blue livery for the VC-25B because it had been publicly expressed as a preferred livery in 2019. A thermal study later concluded the dark blue in the design would require additional Federal Aviation Administration qualification testing for several commercial components due to the added heat in certain environments,” the Air Force’s press release explained about the change away from Trump’s proposed scheme.
“Everything has its time and place. We’ll be changing the colors,” Trump told reporters while aboard one of the existing VC-25As on Jan. 25.
So far, there has been no official request by Trump to reintroduce his preferred livery, an Air Force official told us. As with the other issues, what the new planes will look like is up to the ongoing negotiations between the Air Force, the White House, and Boeing.
In addition, although the VC-25Bs will be more capable in almost every way, some features once seen as critical have already been dropped, despite these aircraft having a massive multi-billion-dollar price tag. The ability for the jets to refuel in the air, previously viewed as extremely important for dealing with a dire contingency, will not be a feature on the VC-25Bs, as least as far as we still know at this time.
As noted earlier, this isn’t the first time Qatar gifted a fully converted royal 747-8i to another nation. In 2018, we were the first to report that Turkish President Recep Erdogan was given the sister ship to the 747-8i that Trump is now so interested in. That deal also raised concerns at the time, but in the end the Jumbo Jet is now flying in Turkish colors.
As for Qatar’s stance on the status of the luxury 747 in question, its possible transfer to the U.S. for temporary use as Air Force One “is currently under consideration between Qatar’s Ministry of Defense and the U.S. Department of Defense, but the matter remains under review by the respective legal departments, and no decision has been made,” Ali Al-Ansari, Qatar’s Media Attaché to the United States, told Politico.
Though Trump is heading to the Middle East, where he will meet with Qatari officials, the White House pushed back against assertions that the president will close the deal on the jet.
“It is true Qatar has offered to donate a plane to the Department of Defense, but the gift will NOT be presented nor accepted this week while in Qatar,” a U.S. official told The War Zone.
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com