The “new” Air Force One is a grift.
This article originally ran in New York magazine on May 12, 2025.
You’d think that no one needs a new jet less than Donald Trump, who already owns his own customized Boeing 757 and, as president, has free use of a pair of heavily modified 747 jumbo jets that collectively make up Air Force One.
But both of his current rides suffer significant disadvantages that Qatar’s “flying palace” 747 would overcome. Over the weekend, ABC News and others reported the country’s royal family is set to donate a jet to the U.S. Air Force in order to be upgraded to carry the president — then transfer its ownership to Trump’s presidential library when he leaves office.
Air Force One’s main drawback for Trump is that he can’t take the planes with him after the White House. Though ownership of what I’ll call the BribeJet will technically be transferred from the Qatari government to the U.S., the point of the transaction is clearly to benefit Trump personally, as he will have exclusive use of it for the rest of his life. “I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer,” he said Monday. “I mean, I could be a stupid person say, ‘No, we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane.’ But it was — I thought it was a great gesture.”
BribeJet’s advantage over Trump’s own aging 757, which he has dubbed “Trump Force One,” is that it is vastly more opulent. As I previously reported, the 757 is a venerable workhorse whose primary virtue is that it looks impressive to those who don’t know much about luxury jets. Originally built as an airliner in the early 1990s, it flew with the now-defunct low-cost carriers Sterling Airlines in Denmark and TAESA Airlines in Mexico, where it likely racked up many thousands of hours of flight time. It was then purchased and converted to a private jet by Paul Allen before being sold to Trump.
Trump routinely misrepresented the plane’s value and luxuriousness in the media, claiming that it cost $100 million (used aircraft of that discontinued model would more likely fetch $5 to $8 million) and that it had “special”engines installed (it carried standard 757 ones). After Trump took office in 2017 and began flying Air Force One, his 757 was left to languish at an airfield in upstate New York with one of its engines removed and the other wrapped in plastic. After he lost the 2020 election, Trump sent the plane for renovation in Texas and often used it as a backdrop during campaign rallies.
Qatar’s 747, in contrast, was built by Boeing specifically as a private jet for the royal family. It was one of two acquired in 2012 and added to Qatar Amiri Flight, a fleet of aircraft that the country’s government maintains for the use of its royal families. (In 2018, Qatar tried to sell the other one but then decided instead to give it to Turkey’s authoritarian leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a move that prompted outrage from Turkish opposition politicians.)
Used infrequently by the royal family, the BribeJet has so far only accumulated about 1,000 hours, meaning it was flown only two hours per week, on average. According to Bloomberg, its interior was outfitted in “creamy white and tan furnishings, rugs, and artwork,” by the fabled Parisian interior design firm of Cabinet Albert Pinto, which accented the décor with “custom-made Tai Ping rugs, sycamore, and wacapou wood fixtures, and artwork by Alexander Calder.” According to a prospectuscirculated when the aircraft was put up for sale in 2020, it features a master bedroom and a guest bedroom tucked into the 747’s upper deck, each with its own en suite bathroom and shower. As with any custom decoration, the aircraft was outfitted to the particular tastes and needs of the then-owner, which may not match the tastes of subsequent buyers. Among the accessories listed in the prospectus is “oven goat,” whatever that is.
The Qatari 747 is significantly younger than the current iterations of Air Force One, both of which first flew in 1990. “It’s a more capable aircraft — greater range, better fuel efficiency, and a more modern flight deck,” says Ethan Dang, founder of the private-aircraft detailing company Onground Systems. The U.S. government has been planning to replace the aircraft with new models since 2018, at a cost of $3.9 billion, but work has been slowed by the fact that, due the extreme importance of the passengers it carries, everyone working on it has to have a special security clearance. The airframes also require heavy modifications. Among other things, Air Force One jets are outfitted with an anti-missile defense system, hardening against a nuclear strike, and the ability to refuel inflight. These modifications take time, and at this point the new jets aren’t expected to be delivered until 2029.
It’s not clear how many of these features the Air Force will add to the BribeJet, or what security clearance those working on it will need. In the past, the government has taken every imaginable precaution to ensure that Air Force One will perform flawlessly (that’s why there are two aircraft to fulfill a single role) and will be safe from foreign eavesdropping (which is why workers need high-level security clearance), but the Trump administration has been cavalier about such precautions, with numerous officials appointed without security vetting. Regardless of how much the administration decides to loosen the Air Force’s requirements for the plane, the work is expected to take long enough that Trump’s second term will nearly be over by the time it’s ready for use. Thus, all the taxpayer dollars that are being funneled into its renovation will mostly go toward its use by Trump as a private citizen, not as the president.