Filenews 17 May 2025 - by Jeremy Bogaisky
Qatar's royal family, owner of one of the world's largest private jet fleets, is quietly unloading some of its largest planes. And it probably found the ideal recipient for one of its Boeing 747 jumbo in the person of Donald Trump, who is unhappy with the multi-year delay in replacing Air Force One.
Many think that Qatar is offering Trump the luxury plane to win his favour, but there is a simpler explanation: the royal family simply doesn't want it anymore.
He even tried to sell it in 2020. Its concession would save Qatari pilots a significant amount of the cost of maintaining and parking the Boeing 747, aviation experts told Forbes. Making Trump happy was an added incentive.
Qatar has given away another Boeing 747 and put two others on standby. Demand for these huge, energy-intensive jets has declined. Few want to buy them, and many of the governments and royal families who own them have been trying to get rid of them for the past decade.
"Qatar, like many modern nations, is turning to leaner, more flexible aircraft, which are more economical and discreet," Linus Bauer, CEO of Dubai-based aviation consultancy BAA & Partners, told Forbes. The concession of the aircraft to Trump marks the "end" of an outdated show in the skies.
Qatar has large oil and gas reserves that make the country the fourth richest in the world based on GDP per capita. Its rulers, the House of Thani, have spent some of their wealth on a fleet of Airbus and Boeing luxury jets for a small number of passengers, as well as smaller Bombardier and Dassault aircraft.
That fleet includes Trump's long-awaited 747, numbered A7-HBJ, the initials of billionaire Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, who served as Qatar's prime minister from 2007 to 2013. It is one of three 747-8s in the Royal Air Fleet, operated by Qatar Amiri Flight. In 2012, when the royal family bought the plane, its price was $367 million. Not including its 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 accommodate 467 people, the HBJ aircraft is a flying mansion designed for 89 passengers, with two bedrooms, entertainment and conference rooms, and a luxurious interior in beige and cream colour created by Parisian house Cabinet Pinto and featuring plane wood and wakapou furniture. silk fabrics and leather.
The 747 model, which was first launched in 1970, revolutionized long-haul air travel by making it accessible to many people. But its four large engines entail high costs in an era of more expensive fuels. As of 2019, the VIP version of the 747-8 cost a staggering $23,000 per flight hour, according to Corporate Jet Investor.
Over the past decade, airlines have been retiring Airbus' 747 and four-engine A340 and shifting to more efficient twin-engine, larger-body aircraft, such as the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350. In addition to Qatar, other royal families as well as governments are abandoning the four-engine "flying palaces" that consume huge amounts of fuel: among them Saudi Arabia, Brunei, the United Arab Emirates and Germany.
In addition, large blatant aircraft are an easier target, notes Richard Aboulafia, aerospace consultant at Aerodynamic Advisory. On top of that, they can only land on large runways. "If you have a narrower aircraft, or a traditional business jet, you can land at a lot more airports," he adds.
The Qatari royal family's "gift" to Trump has just 1,069 flight hours in five years before it was put up for sale in 2020, according to a brochure on the plane issued by AMAC Aerospace, which built its interior.
One of Qatar's other two 747-8 VIP jets does not appear in flight tracking services, suggesting it may have withdrawn from active action, Bauer noted. In 2018, Qatar gave a similar 747-8 to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and got rid of an older 747-SP to an asset management company, which appears to have permanently parked the aircraft.
Bulky planes, with their peculiar interior decoration, are not easy to sell. "The market is incredibly closed for such a jet," Aboulafia explained.
The model aircraft is a luxury 747-8 ordered for Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud before his death in 2011. It was given for spare parts in 2022 with just 42 hours of flight.
Saudi Arabia's active fleet of royal 747s has been reduced to one aircraft, while two have been recorded as decommissioned in the past three years. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman uses smaller aircraft such as the Boeing 737 and 787-8.
The 747-8 is still in high demand for freight, given its vast interior space. Two-thirds of the 155 such aircraft sold by Boeing were configured as "commercial." But aircraft, such as Qatar's 747-8s, are unsuitable to be converted into "trucks" because they were created for long-haul flights with few passengers and adapted interiors, Bauer said.
"Their interiors would have to be dismantled, the floor would have to be reinforced, its door changed and its integrity re-certified – an extremely costly and complex process," he added.
The concession of the 747-8 to the U.S. saves the Qatari royal family from ever-higher maintenance costs as the 747 fleet shrinks worldwide and there are fewer engineers available who know how to repair them, said John Goglia, a former airline engineer and member of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. The thorough inspection of the dismantling of the plane and engines, usually carried out every 6 to 12 years, can take months and cost millions of dollars. "The numbers are staggering," Goglia stressed.
Trump is angry that Boeing is delaying the timing of a $3.9 billion contract to equip two 747s to be used as presidential aircraft. He argued 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 the social media platform Truth Social.
Aerospace experts aren't so sure. The plane would have to be dismantled. Then, to rebuild its interior according to U.S. Air Force standards to function as a secure air command center, with encrypted communication systems, protection from the effects of a nuclear explosion and air defense against missiles. A process that Boeing, despite the delays, has been in place for years on the two planes it has been working on since 2018, since Trump's first term.
It will take at least five years if everything starts from scratch, Aboulafia estimated, "unless safety requirements are relaxed."
"I can't imagine any well-trained senior Air Force officer saying that's a good idea," he added. Democrats and some Republicans are concerned about whether it is ethical for Trump to accept such an expensive gift from a foreign state.
Boeing's goal for the delivery of the presidential aircraft was revised from 2024 to 2028 or 2029, but the company recently conveyed to the U.S. Air Force that it could implement delivery within 2027 if safety requirements are relaxed. The Trump administration tasked Elon Musk with finding ways to speed up the process.
Boeing ran into problems with suppliers for the aircraft's internal components, the design of the cables, and finding workers with a safety license to work on such a sensitive project.
For Qatar, winning the favour of the Trump administration would not be bad. Supporters of Israel in Washington have repeatedly accused Qatar of its ties to Iran and its support for Hamas and other Islamist groups. A think tank has proposed the sale of $2 billion worth of weapons. A proposal that is pending approval in Congress to bring the United States closer to the Arab state.
Rendering – editing: Michalis Papantonopoulos
