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The luxurious presidential airplane that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been trying to sell for months has returned to Mexico after drawing a bid while it was in a hangar in the United States.
The presidential plane arrived back in Mexico City on July 22. Photographers and reporters arrived at the local airport in hopes of taking a look at the custom-made jet.
The airplane was piloted by the Mexican Air Force (FAM). It left California at 9:29 AM and arrived in Mexico five hours later. Authorities will keep the plane at the former presidential hangar, where members of the air force will guard it.
On July 23, López Obrador revealed the buyer has made a deposit and that although the airplane returned to Mexico, the purchase process will continue.
The President said there are two potential buyers. One has offered to pay in cash and medical equipment, while the other buyer only offers cash.
The United National will oversee the sale-purchase.
The President said he will hold a meeting and news conference at the former presidential hangar next Monday. Reporters and photographers will be able to board the airplane.
An expensive affair
According to the service order signed between Mexico’s Defense Ministry (Sedena) and Boeing Company in December 2018, the annual fee was USD 719,321. Therefore, the government paid around MXN 14,386,420 during the first year the Boeing 787 was in California.
On average, the monthly fee to keep the luxurious jet in California was MXN 1,198,860, Thus, Mexico paid around MXN 22,778,489 since the plane was kept in the hangar for 18 months.
President López Obrador has been flying commercial airlines or traveling by road since taking office in late 2018 and views the custom Boeing 787 jet as a symbol of wasteful luxury. He bought regular airline tickets for his first trip abroad to Washington in earlier July, with layovers both ways.
Sales of tickets in a symbolic raffle for the plane have also resumed after a months-long pause caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Nearly a quarter of the 6 million USD 25 tickets have been sold. Each of the 100 winners will collect about USD 1 million.
The plane was purchased by former President Felipe Calderón for USD 200 million and was used by the previous president, Enrique Peña Nieto. It has been difficult to sell because it is modified to carry only 80 people and has a full presidential suite with a private bath. Experts say it would be costly to reconfigure into a typical passenger jet that would carry up to 300 passengers.
While the plane was abroad, the Mexican government paid around MXN 22,778,000 in maintenance and conservation fees.
In January, EL UNIVERSAL reported that the Mexican government learned the presidential plane would generate million-dollar losses in 2015.
Since 2015, during Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration, the Mexican government knew the purchase of the José María Morelos y Pavón TP-01 presidential plane would represent the loss of up to USD 137 million, which was purchased by the government led by Felipe Calderón Hinojosa in 2012, for USD 218.7 million,
In September 2015, then-President Enrique Peña Nieto asked Banobras to issue a sales study about the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner assembled in 2009, which was used for flight tests by Boeing before it was purchased by the Mexican government.
The study was carried out by Ascend FlightGlobal Consultancy, a company based in London. The study was finalized in December 2015.
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