President Trump is preparing to retire the aging Air Force One in favor of a $400 million Boeing 747 donated by Qatar, capping a contentious effort to replace the presidential fleet that raised ethical, legal and national-security alarms across Washington. White House officials marked the handoff Thursday as the president boarded one of the two decades-old jets at Geneva Airport, bound for Versailles after wrapping up a Group of Seven summit in France.
How the Qatar-donated jet became Air Force One
The aircraft, accepted by the U.S. government in May and now designated a "VC-25 bridge aircraft," will fill in until Boeing finally delivers a pair of purpose-built replacements — a program so far behind schedule that the new jets are not expected until 2028. Modification work, including the secure communications and defensive systems any presidential aircraft requires, began last September and has run for months at facilities in San Antonio, Texas, where much of the Air Force One fleet's specialized outfitting is done.
The planes Trump is leaving behind are modified Boeing 747-200B jets that have flown presidents for more than 35 years. They are reliable symbols of American power, but they are also old, and maintenance headaches have mounted. Air Force officials have argued privately for years that the fleet needed replacing; the Qatari jet offered a way to bridge the gap without waiting on Boeing.
The ethics questions that won't go away
What makes this handoff different from a routine aircraft swap is where the plane came from. A foreign government gave it to the United States, and watchdogs from both parties have spent months warning that accepting a gift of that size from a Gulf monarchy invites questions about influence, obligation and the Constitution's restrictions on foreign emoluments. "You cannot un-ask the question of what Qatar expects in return, even if the answer is nothing," said a former government ethics lawyer who reviewed the arrangement and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Security specialists raised a second concern: vetting a wide-body jet built and maintained abroad for the electronic threats a head-of-state aircraft must withstand. The Air Force has said the months of modification work address those risks, but the process has been opaque, and members of Congress from both parties have demanded briefings on what was found and what was replaced.
The cost math is its own controversy. Supporters frame the donated jet as a bargain that spares taxpayers the price of an interim aircraft while Boeing's troubled program limps toward 2028. Critics counter that "free" is the most expensive word in Washington when the gift comes from a government with business before the United States, and that the months of security retrofitting in Texas carried a real bill of their own. The Air Force has not published a full accounting of what the modifications cost, and lawmakers say they intend to pry one loose.
A presidency staged in the air
For a president who treats the trappings of office as instruments of message, the optics of a gleaming new jet are not incidental. The handoff caps a stretch of high-visibility foreign travel that included the G7, where Trump pressed allies on trade and security — the same gathering where his defense secretary delivered a blunt message to NATO about U.S. troops in Europe, a story USAFlux covers in this report from Brussels.
The bridge aircraft is expected to enter regular service this summer. Whether it ultimately reads as a savvy fix for a broken procurement program or a monument to a deal Washington never fully scrutinized may depend on what, if anything, Qatar ever asks of the country that accepted its gift. For now, an aging American icon is headed for retirement, and a foreign-built 747 is taking its place at the center of the presidency.