President Trump's new Air Force One is cleared for takeoff.
On Wednesday, Trump will take his maiden flight on the Boeing 747-8 luxury jet that was given to the U.S. by the Qatari government. The president is traveling to North Dakota for the opening of Theodore Roosevelt's presidential library.
The plane will be in temporary use until two presidential aircraft that have long been delayed are delivered.
The new plane had a $400 million overhaul to equip it with state-of-the-art security and technology for the president, such as a new communications system. The renovation also included some alterations to the lavish interiors of the Qatari royal family's private plane. The president pored over exterior designs for the plane, which replaces the old Air Force One's signature white and baby blue color scheme with a red, white, navy and gold paint job that resembles the look of Trump's personal jet.
"There will never be one like this," Trump said during an unveiling of the plane at Joint Base Andrews last week. "This is considered the world's most luxurious plane when it was built. It was built at a level that will probably never be seen again."
The new plane replaces the Boeing 747-200 aircraft that had served as Air Force Once since George H.W. Bush's presidency. The plane was donated to the U.S. by the Qatari government last year after Trump complained that the presidential planes he flew on were too old and small. He has dismissed criticism over the donation, including concerns from both Democrats and Republicans about the ethics and national security implications of accepting the plane.
Trump has wanted a new presidential plane since his first term. Despite choosing Boeing in 2017 to modify two 747s, the project has faced numerous setbacks. Neither plane has flown, and the Air Force doesn't expect to receive the first aircraft until mid-2028.
In the fall of 2024, around the time Trump was re-elected president, the Air Force began looking at other options. A new 747 was out of the question since Boeing stopped manufacturing the plane in 2023, so Air Force officials began looking at the market for used aircraft.
There were only about four dozen 747-8i, the newest passenger version of the 747, in existence. Ten of those were VIP private jets and none of them were in the U.S. One of them was the Qatari plane Trump will fly on for the first time this week.
Trump toured the Qatari plane at Palm Beach International Airport in February 2025. Ownership of the plane was transferred to the U.S. Air Force in the spring 2025. It was then sent to an L3Harris Technologies facility in Texas, where an overhaul began to install specialized communications equipment that would allow the president to make secure voice and video calls as if he were in the White House. Trump said the plane is also equipped with Elon Musk's Starlink high-speed satellite internet.
The objective was to deliver the plane before the country's 250th birthday festivities, said Jason Lambert, president of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance at L3Harris Technologies. Despite being more than a decade old, the aircraft had a low number of flight hours, he said.
The Air Force said in a statement the aircraft is "safe, secure and equipped with the most advanced technologies necessary to meet the requirements of the presidential mission," and added that the overhaul gave priority to "mission over aesthetics, leaving much of the previous head of state interior layout minimally changed."
Some of the changes to the interiors include the removal of Arabic-language exit signs and the contemporary artwork once enjoyed by the Qatari royals, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. The plane's plush leather seats and couches and faux library bookcases will remain, although U.S. presidential seals will be affixed to the walls. Patriotic pieces of art, including a photo of a duck swimming in the Reflecting Pool, were hung on some of the walls of the plane.
While the plane was being modified in Texas, the company built a 3-D virtual model inside a hangar at Joint Base Andrews so that flight crews and maintenance workers could familiarize themselves with the new plane, Lambert said.
Since the new plane uses different types of ovens, the Air Force obtained a few so the crews could practice cooking before the plane arrived, an Air Force official said.
In all, the modifications took L3Harris about 10 months from when it received the plane, Lambert said.
To accommodate the massive, two-story Boeing 747-8, the U.S. Air Force constructed a custom $320 million, 400,000-square-foot hangar complex at Joint Base Andrews.
After North Dakota, the president is expected to travel to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota on Friday, a day before the Independence Day celebrations in Washington. Trump said the new jet would do a flyover during Saturday's event.
Write to Meridith McGraw at Meridith.McGraw@WSJ.com and Marcus Weisgerber at marcus.weisgerber@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 01, 2026 05:00 ET (09:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Comments