US President Donald Trump said Wednesday he was excited to take his first flight aboard his new Air Force One plane and thanked Qatar for the controversial gift of the luxury jet.
Trump said the US “couldn’t build a plane like this” – despite the heavily modified Boeing 747-8 plane being originally made there.
“To be honest with you, I’m excited for the first flight. Nobody’s ever seen anything like this,” Trump told reporters traveling with him, including an AFP photographer, ahead of a trip to North Dakota.
The 80-year-old president is to attend an event at the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library as part of the celebration of the 250th anniversary of American independence.
“They just completed it. They did it appropriate for a president, meaning the security and all the different bells and whistles that they have on. Very complex stuff, but it’s really something,” Trump said at Joint Base Andrews near Washington.
Critics have raised a host of ethical, constitutional and security concerns about giving an aircraft worth hundreds of millions of dollars to a foreign power like Qatar.
The wealthy Gulf emirate, which also plays a key role as a mediator in US-Iran talks, donated the jet last year. It has since gone through major changes and tests.
The first flight also comes just a day after Trump faced further ethics scrutiny over filings that showed he made about $1.2 billion from his family’s cryptocurrency ventures in his first year back in power.
But Trump dismissed any suggestion of impropriety, saying the cost to American taxpayers of customizing the Qatar plane was “very little compared to what it would cost if we did it another way.”
“Frankly, we couldn’t build a plane like this because we wouldn’t be willing to spend the money necessary. They spent top dollar,” Trump told reporters.
Trump said he had asked the emir of Qatar if he could use the plane, but “he said ‘no, no, I want to make a contribution to the country, so that was very nice.’
The plane will serve as a stopgap until Boeing delivers two new custom-built Air Force Ones, which are expected to be delivered in two years after a series of delays and cost overruns.
Trump has long been obsessed with replacing the aging Air Force One fleet, though one of them appeared to be traveling as a backup for him on Wednesday.
