President Trump has said for more than a year that the Qatari-gifted jumbo jet now serving as Air Force One will go straight to his presidential library once he leaves office. His son Eric said Wednesday that’s not the plan anymore.
When NBC News asked whether the plane would end up at the library complex his family is developing in Miami, Eric Trump texted back, “No. That’s not the plan at the moment for Miami.” He pointed instead to precedent — other presidential libraries display retired Air Force One aircraft, including the Boeing 707 at Ronald Reagan’s.
The president told reporters in May 2025 the plane would go “directly to the library after I leave office.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth backed that up under oath a month later, telling the Senate Appropriations Committee it matched his own understanding of the arrangement. Nothing has formally changed since. Qatar and the administration still haven’t signed a memorandum of understanding governing the transfer, and the Pentagon has repeatedly declined to disclose the retrofit’s cost or timeline to lawmakers.
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Richard Painter, a former White House ethics lawyer, told MEAWW that handing the aircraft to Trump’s library, a private entity, rather than keeping it inside the Air Force fleet, could run afoul of the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause, which restricts government officials from taking gifts, titles, or payments from foreign states unless Congress signs off. Keeping the plane in government hands, he said, “would likely avoid that problem.”
The administration disputes there’s a constitutional problem, pointing to a 1990 statute that lets the Pentagon accept contributions for defense programs, which is why the Department of Defense formally owns the aircraft rather than Trump himself.
Sen. Chris Murphy and nine other Democrats have introduced the Luxury Jet Ethics and Transparency Act, which would bar the jet from ever leaving Air Force control and order a government watchdog to review both the original gift and the retrofit contract; it has little chance in a Republican Congress.
At a recent hearing, Murphy asked Hegseth point-blank whether the library transfer was still the plan, and came away without a guarantee that Trump wouldn’t keep the jet for himself instead. Senate Democrats have also questioned the Air Force and contractor L3Harris (NYSE: LHX) over whether rushing the roughly $400 million retrofit into 10 months, down from what’s normally a multi-year process, diverted resources from other defense priorities.
The jet remains part of the active Air Force fleet, though the White House grounded it in July after intelligence pointed to a possible Iranian plot against Trump’s life, and he flew home from a NATO summit in Turkey on the older presidential aircraft instead.
Aviation experts have told Forbes the plane’s unfinished security upgrades, including midair refueling capability, could take until the 2030s to complete, well past the administration’s own 2029 target for handing it to the library foundation.
Boeing (NYSE: BA) is also years behind schedule on the two permanent Air Force One replacements that will eventually retire it, with the first unlikely to arrive before 2028.
