Accepting a Qatari 747 is a bad, bad, terrible idea

No, it's not 4D chess, or a play on Boeing. It's just Trump likes flying rococo style.

There are certain bees that seem to stay in President Trump’s bonnet, and one of these is the aircraft used as Air Force One.

Qatar Amiri Flight Boeing 747-8 VQ-BSK at Zurich Airport. Image source: Wikimedia Commons. BriYYZ, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>

Trump has long had a love affair with jet airliners, which anyone who operates personal luxury jets knows is a love-hate relationship. He bought the failing Eastern Shuttle service from Boston to New York and rebranded it as a Trump Shuttle in 1989. By 1992, having lost well over $100 million, it was shut down. Trump’s current personal 757 jet was acquired in 2011 from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

In 2018, Trump, in his first term as president, renegotiated the contract with Boeing to build the VC-25B, a new version of the aircraft known Air Force One when the president is aboard. That project is delayed and set for delivery in 2027 or even 2028, meaning Trump may never get to enjoy flying on it. Now, he’s reportedly accepted a luxury 747 from the Qatari royal family, to be used as Air Force One, and then donated to his presidential library when he leaves office.

To be clear: this jet is not a personal gift. The president is not allowed to accept personal gifts of any material value. Any gifts must be made to the United States government, so technically a luxury 747-800 would be a government asset. It is a very bad idea to accept this. Here’s why.

Even at $3.8 billion, the current VC-25B program represents just under 0.4 percent of Trump’s proposed 2026 defense budget of $1.01 trillion. Anything that’s to the right of the decimal point, especially in a program that’s been on the books for a decade, is really not worth capsizing in favor of some hare-brained scheme to speed up the Boeing crew. Boeing is slow, and prone to feature-creep when dealing with ever-changing government requirements. And the VC-25B is chock-full of security, communications, and other top secret requirements, which is completely reasonable given its task to be the chariot of the most powerful leader of the western world.

To take a fully-outfitted airframe like the Qatari royal 747, and add all the systems, communications gear and defensive capabilities that Air Force One needs to have, to me, would be a tremendous—and tremendously expensive—project. If rushed, it could be botched. And who would do that work? Boeing is really the only candidate. And who would ensure that whatever the Qataris had done to the plane doesn’t represent a security threat? I don’t even know.

I do know that I wouldn’t trust that aircraft to be completely sanitized, from a security point of view, and ready to take on the most sensitive tasks, such as ordering a U.S. nuclear response, until every nut, bolt, jackscrew, data line, and fiber of carpet had been carefully examined. I don’t think Trump has thought that out, or if he has, he is accepting far more risk than he should.

Then there’s the diplomatic issues. Qatar is ruled by an all-powerful emir. Since the mid-19th century, the Al Thani family has ruled Qatar, which sits on the largest natural gas field in the world, and therefore is filthy rich. The Al Thani family controls over $500 billion in a global wealth fund known as the Qatar Investment Authority. They own significant stakes in Harrods (which it owns outright), Barclays Bank (though less than it was 10 years ago), Canary Wharf Group, The Shard, Heathrow Airport, and Chelsea Barracks. And that’s just in London.

In the U.S., QIA invested $650 million in CityCenterDC, a mixed-use development, and also owns a few Manhattan skyscrapers. In Europe, it holds a 17 percent stake in Volkswagen Group (one of the company’s largest shareholders), along with 7 percent of Credit Suisse, and a large chunk of the U.K.’s largest supermarket, Sainsbury’s.

QIA is positioning itself to make strong investments in technology, AI, healthcare, and infrastructure, not to mention sports, travel, and entertainment. A gift of a 747 to the United States president would be seen as a major boon to the Al Thanis and the emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. By extension, the Al Thanis regularly exchange information and social connections with the Al Nahyan, Al Maktoum, Al Khalifa, Al Sabah, Al Said families, and the House of Saud. These families rule and control Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, and Saudi Arabia, respectively.

These are important allies to the United States, especially in our opposition to Iran, Yemen (controlled by the Houthis), and the lawless pirates operating in the Gulf of Aden. But Qatar also has its own dark side. It owns the Al Jazeera network, which is filled with Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas operatives. Qatar frequently stands against Egypt and Jordan, and supported Mohamed Morsi, a brotherhood member who ruled Egypt until 2013. The Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is a branch, is now banned in Egypt and considered a terrorist organization by the Saudis, UAE, and Egypt, but not Qatar.

Qatar hosted Hamas leadership in Doha for years (until Israel assassinated Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran), and poured over a billion dollars into Gaza, which was used for weapons, tunnels and terror. Accepting a large gift from Qatar would be considered a slap in the face to Israel.

Since Hamas has now announced the release of Edan Alexander, the last U.S. hostage held in Gaza, a gift by Qatar, which has held the role of go-between for Hamas with the U.S. and Israel, could be seen as a “plane for hostages” deal, which is worse than Reagan’s arms for hostages deal, or Obama’s pallet of cash deal with Iran. I don’t even think such a thing is necessary.

Finally, the disposition of the aircraft, especially if it’s part of the terms of the gift, is ethically loaded. I don’t think even the U.S. president can accept a gift with strings attached, even if it’s his own strings. I doubt that Donald Trump could designate the gift of a 747 airframe to be used as presidential transport while he’s in office, and then donated to his presidential library—for his private use—when he leaves office. I don’t think that would survive a court challenge. If the jet belongs to the U.S. government, then whoever is president gets to decide how it’s disposed, or used. It’s incredibly presumptuous of Trump to think whoever is president after him is going to let him continue using the jet.

And even if Trump can continue using the jet after he’s out of office, who will pay for maintenance, fuel, and crew? Again, a government asset can’t be seconded to a private individual to maintain, crew, and fuel. And unless Congress allocates funds and passes a law allowing unlimited use of taxpayer-funded transportation services by a former president, Trump is going to have to pay for the jet’s use himself—including whatever rack rate the Treasury Department charges (based on DOD numbers) for the use of a luxury 747 by the hour.

To do this any other way would constitute theft. But then again, isn’t taking classified documents from the White House considered…oh, never mind.

To the Al Thani family, this gift is the equivalent of a toy, a pittance. To the U.S. government and the DOD budget, this aircraft is to the right of the decimal point. But in terms of diplomacy, power, and ethics, this jet is a giant problem. Why do it? To get Boeing moving faster on the VC-25B? That’s a really flimsy excuse, and I don’t believe it anyway. To leverage negotiations with Israel and Hamas over Gaza? I don’t see how a jet handing Qatar such access would be useful in that.

No, I think the reason is simply that Trump likes big, fancy, luxury airplanes, and Boeing isn’t moving fast enough to give him his new Air Force One, so he’s going to take the Qatari royal family’s offer and fly rococo style, no matter the risks, or who gets hurt by it. And to top it off, he’s going to try to keep the jet when he’s out of office. It’s that simple.

But it’s still a bad, bad, terrible idea.

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