By President Donald Trump is poised to take temporary command of a flying palace: a $400 million Boeing 747-8 originally commissioned by Qatar’s royal family. The aircraft—widely considered one of the most luxurious ever built—will serve as an interim Air Force One during Trump’s second term, according to sources familiar with the agreement. Eventually, it will be donated to the Trump Presidential Library Foundation, making it the most valuable gift ever bestowed upon the United States by a foreign government, according to ABC News.
Trump personally toured the aircraft in February during a stop at West Palm Beach International Airport. The jet, now 13 years old, features ornate interiors and a layout befitting royalty. Its arrival comes as the existing Air Force One fleet—two aging 747-200s from the George H.W. Bush era—continues to face modernization delays. A 2018 agreement for new planes remains stalled, with delivery pushed back to at least 2027. Despite Trump’s attempts to accelerate the timeline—including tapping Elon Musk for support—progress has lagged.
The Qatar handoff is expected to be announced during Trump’s upcoming state visit to Doha, his first overseas trip since returning to office. Under the plan, the U.S. Air Force will take formal possession of the aircraft and oversee necessary modifications to bring it in line with military and presidential transport standards. Defense contractor L3Harris has been tapped for the retrofit, which will include advanced communications and security upgrades—likely pushing the aircraft’s total value even higher.
The Daily Mail explained that the moves comes amid years-long delays in the provision of two replacements for the aging presidential planes that the president commissioned during his last time in office.
After becoming frustrated at Boeing’s apparently inability to deliver the order Trump wants L3Harris, a defense contractor, to transform the luxury aircraft previously used by Qatar by the fall, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Its a major setback for Boeing, which had been tapped during Trump’s first term to deliver a new pair of state-of-the-art planes to replace the old ones that have been in service since George H.W. Bush administration.
Boeing has fallen so behind on the $3.9 billion project that it now fears it won’t be able to finish building the planes before Trump leaves office. They were supposed to be finished last year, but a series of supplier and engineering snags has caused the project to take years and go billions over budget.
Behind the scenes it appears Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg’s visit to the White House on April 18 did nothing to smooth things over.
BOEING CAN'T BUILD A NEW AIR FORCE ONE.
That's the buried lede. It's the central problem.
— Will Chamberlain (@willchamberlain) May 12, 2025
Boeing is one of America’s biggest defense contractors, and its inability to deliver Air Force One has been a headache for years, wrote Reuters in 2024, before Trump was elected.
But the move has already ignited legal and ethical questions, particularly around the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which bars federal officials from accepting gifts from foreign powers. The Trump administration insists the arrangement passes muster. Legal opinions from both the Department of Justice and the White House counsel’s office—led by Attorney General Pam Bondi and Trump’s chief legal adviser David Warrington—argue that the gift is constitutional because it is made to the Department of Defense rather than the president personally. Moreover, because the jet will be transferred to a nonprofit entity by January 1, 2029, the administration claims it falls outside the scope of federal bribery statutes.
Still, critics are likely to challenge the optics, if not the legality, of the deal. No U.S. president has ever flown in a foreign gift of this magnitude—let alone one ultimately earmarked for his own library foundation. The White House, Pentagon, and Qatari embassy have all declined to comment.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, called the reported deal “a grift,” noted The Hill.
“Trump must seek Congress’ consent to take this $300 million gift from Qatar. The Constitution is perfectly clear: no present ‘of any kind whatever’ from a foreign state without Congressional permission. A gift you use for four years and then deposit in your library is still a gift (and a grift),” Raskin wrote Twitter.
Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, said in a post before Trump’s own remarks that “even if it’s not a done deal yet, the fact giving Trump a jet is ‘under consideration’ tells you all you need to know about what countries are being told they need to do to be an ally with America under Trump.”
Neither Democrat raised an eyebrow when Qatar was giving money directly to the Biden family or fellow Democrats were using money from the country as a political slush fund, of course.
The Bidens weren’t the only ones connected to the Middle Eastern country, either. Some of the most vocal critics of the Trump move flew to Qatar during the pandemic.
Hmm. I seem to recall Ruben Gallego and his boy Eric Swalwell riding camels on a junket to Qatar. When they were shutting down American businesses during the pandemic.https://t.co/6JCmtKzolH https://t.co/2hLZJQcbsK pic.twitter.com/io4UhTuLrj
— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) May 12, 2025
Trump blasted Democrats for the criticism, writing on Truth Social, ““So the fact that the Defense Department is getting a GIFT, FREE OF CHARGE, of a 747 aircraft to replace the 40 year old Air Force One, temporarily, in a very public and transparent transaction, so bothers the Crooked Democrats that they insist we pay, TOP DOLLAR, for the plane. Anybody can do that! The Dems are World Class Losers!!! MAGA.”
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