The president may be thirsting for a new four-engine jumbo jet, but many governments and royal families are unloading their fuel-guzzling palaces in the sky.
The royal family of Qatar, owner of one of the largest private jet fleets in the world, has been quietly getting rid of some of its biggest planes. It may have found the perfect taker for one of its Boeing 747 jumbo jets in President Donald Trump, who has been frustrated with the multi-year delays in replacing Air Force One.
But while many have speculated that the Qataris have offered Trump the luxurious plane to curry favor with the famously transactional president, there may be a simpler rationale: they just don’t want it anymore.
The royals have failed to sell the plane, which was put on the market in 2020, according to an archived cop 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.
Qatar, which has given away another blinged-out 747 and may have mothballed two more, epitomizes the fading demand for these huge, fuel-guzzling, highly personalized airplanes. There aren’t many who want to buy them, and many of the governments and royal families who own them have been trying to ditch them over the past decade.
“Qatar, like many modern states, is shifting toward leaner, more versatile aircraft, which offer better economics and more discreet presence for official travel,” Linus Bauer, managing director of the Dubai-based aviation consulting firm BAA & Partners, told Forbes. Giving the plane to Trump would be “a creative disposal strategy” that marks “a farewell to a bygone model of geopolitical theater in the skies.”
The arid peninsula off Saudi Arabia in the Persian Gulf, similar in size to Connecticut, boasts deep reserves of oil and gas that have made the country the fourth-wealthiest in the world by per capita GDP and enriched its rulers, the House of Thani. The family has plowed some of their wealth into an extravagant fleet of roughly a dozen Airbus and Boeing airliners converted into luxurious rides for a small number of passengers, as well as smaller business jets from Bombardier and Dassault.
That includes the 747 coveted by Trump, which was given the tail number A7-HBJ, the initials of billionaire Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, who served as prime minister of Qatar from 2007 to 2013. It’s one of three 747-8s currently in the royal air fleet, which is managed by an entity called Qatar Amiri Flight. 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.
Unlike the passenger version of the 747-8, which can seat 467 people, the HBJ jet is a flying mansion designed for just 89 passengers, with two bedrooms, entertainment and meeting rooms, and a sumptuous beige and cream-colored interior created by the Parisian design house Cabinet Pinto that features furnishings made of sycamore and wakapou wood, silk fabrics and natural leather.
The 747, which entered service in 1970, revolutionized air travel by making long-distance air travel affordable for a mass market. But its four big engines make for high costs in an era of higher fuel prices. As of 2019, the VIP version of the 747-8 cost an eye-popping $23,000 an hour to operate, according to Corporate Jet Investor.
Over the past decade, airlines have been retiring the 747 and Airbus’ four-engine A340 in favor of more efficient twin-engine widebodies like the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350, as well as longer-range narrowbodies. Like Qatar, a number of royal families and governments have also been moving away from fuel-guzzling, four-engine palaces in the sky and other large twin-aisle jets, including Saudi Arabia, Brunei, the UAE and Germany.
Beyond poor fuel efficiency, large ostentatious planes are a security risk, notes Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace consultant with Aerodynamic Advisory. “These things are big targets.” And bigger planes can only land on longer runways, limiting their usage. “There are a lot more airports you can get into if you have a narrowbody, and many more still if you have a traditional business jet,” he said.
The 747 the Qataris may give Trump only flew 1,069 hours in the five years before it was put on the market in 2020, according to a brochure for the plane from AMAC Aerospace, which built its interior.
One of the Qataris’ other two VIP 747-8s hasn’t been showing up on flight tracking services, indicating it may have been pulled from active service, said Bauer. In 2018, Qatar gave a similar 747-8 to Turkish President Reycep Tayyip Erdogan and offloaded an older 747-SP to an asset management firm, which appears to have put the plane in storage.
The massive, highly customized planes, with idiosyncratic interior decorating, are not easy to sell. “The market is incredibly illiquid for a jet like this,” said Aboulafia.
The poster child is a lavish 747-8 commissioned for Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud before his death in 2011. It was scrapped for parts in 2022 with just 42 hours of flight time.
The active Saudi royal 747 fleet is down to one, with two listed as mothballed in the last three years. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is using smaller aircraft like the Boeing 737 and 787-8.
The 747-8 is still in high demand to carry cargo given its huge internal volume. Two-thirds of the 155 that Boeing sold were configured as freighters, including the final one that left the factory in 2023. But planes like Qatar’s 747-8s are ill-suited to be converted into freighters since they were structurally and mechanically optimized for long-range flight with few passengers and custom interiors, said Bauer.
“It would require gutting the interior, reinforcing the floor, cutting a cargo door, and re-certifying structural integrity — an extremely expensive and complex process,” he said.
Giving the 747-8 to the U.S. would also allow the Qataris to avoid maintenance costs that are only getting higher with the 747 fleet shrinking worldwide and fewer mechanics available who know how to work on them, said John Goglia, a former airline mechanic and member of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. 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 numbers are staggering,” said Goglia.
By contrast, Trump, who’s incensed that Boeing is years behind schedule on a $3.9 billion contract to fit out two 747s to serve as presidential jets, on Tuesday claimed that the Qatari plane would save American taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. “Only a FOOL would not accept this gift on behalf of our Country,” Trump wrote on his social-media platform Truth Social.
Aerospace experts aren’t so sure. 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 a secure airborne command center, with encrypted communications systems, shielding to protect the electronics from the effects of a nuclear blast and defenses against missiles. That’s a process that Boeing, despite all its delays, is years down the road already with the two planes it began work on in 2018 during Trump’s first term.
It would take at least five years starting again from scratch, Aboulafia estimates, unless security requirements were relaxed.
“I can’t imagine any well-trained senior Air Force officer saying this is a good idea,” he said. Democrats and some Republicans are also alarmed over the ethics of accepting such an expensive gift from a foreign country.
Boeing’s target for delivery, originally 2024, has slipped to 2028 or 2029, but the company recently told the Air Force it could advance completion to 2027 if requirements are relaxed. The Trump administration tasked billionaire Elon Musk with finding ways to speed up the process.
Boeing has struggled with problems with suppliers for interior components of the jet, the wiring design, and finding workers with security clearances to work on such a sensitive project.
For Qatar, currying favor with the Trump administration couldn’t hurt. The Qataris have come under attack in Washington from pro-Israel advocates for their links to Iran and support for Palestinian militant group Hamas and other Islamist groups. At least one think tank has proposed using a $2 billion pending arms sale, currently up for congressional approval, to push Qatar to change its ways.
If Trump does take the 747, the Qataris will still have plenty of other planes to get around on in the Amiri Flight stable, as well as access to Qatar Airways fleet of executive jets, notes business aviation consultant Brian Foley. “I don’t think they’ll miss it.”
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