Air Force finishes Qatar 747 for temporary Air Force One use

The U.S. Air Force has finished modifying and testing a Boeing 747 donated by Qatar and expects it to be ready for President Donald Trump this summer, a striking move that pushes a foreign-gift controversy into the center of the presidential airlift program. The jet is now being painted in red, white and blue, and the service says it will serve as a bridge until Boeing delivers the next generation of presidential aircraft, now expected in 2028.

That bridge comes as the current Air Force One fleet ages under the strain of time and maintenance. The presidential air transport fleet consists of two specially configured Boeing 747-200B aircraft, tail numbers 28000 and 29000. The first VC-25A flew as Air Force One on Sept. 6, 1990, and the replacement VC-25B program was created to address capability gaps, rising maintenance costs and parts obsolescence as the fleet passed 30 years of service.

The temporary solution is also the product of an unusually contentious gift. In July 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Qatar’s deputy prime minister and minister of state for defense affairs, Saoud bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, signed a memorandum of understanding describing the aircraft as an unconditional donation. Hegseth accepted the luxury jet despite questions about whether it was appropriate, or even legal, for the United States to take such an expensive aircraft from a foreign government.

The political and constitutional objections have been blunt. Sen. Jack Reed said accepting the plane without congressional consent would be a “clear violation” of the Emoluments Clause. Other lawmakers from both parties have also raised questions about ethics, constitutional authority and whether a foreign-donated jet could be treated as presidential property or later transferred to a library.

Security concerns have shadowed the arrangement from the start. Critics have warned about the intelligence risks of retrofitting a plane built and owned abroad for the commander in chief, as well as the practical challenge of securing a platform that would carry the president of the United States. Trump has defended the plan as a way to save taxpayers money and said he would not keep using the aircraft once his term ends.

He has suggested the plane could eventually be donated to a presidential library, much as Ronald Reagan’s Boeing 707 was preserved as a museum piece at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. But the comparison only goes so far: Reagan’s aircraft was a U.S.-owned presidential plane, while the Qatar 747 arrives as a foreign-government gift at a moment when delays, cost overruns and prestige politics have already made the Air Force One modernization effort a long-running test of public trust.