Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador wants to hire out the Mexican version of Air Force One for weddings and quinceañera coming of age parties after the government failed to find a buyer for the unwanted multi-million-dollar luxury jet.
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner was bought by Obrador’s predecessor Enrique Peña Nieto to replace an ageing Boeing 757 but Obrador, a self-proclaimed ‘man of the people’ views the presidential jet as a lavish waste of money and wants nothing to do with the plane.
Bought at a cost of US $218.7, the 787-8 was expected to serve the Mexican government on a lease for at least 15 years. Instead, the aircraft has sat largely unused since Obrador took office and attempts to offload the luxury jet haven’t got very far.
A review by Ascend Flightglobal Consultancy found that commercial airlines wouldn’t want to acquire because of the significant cost of converting from a high-end luxury plane interior to a commercial aircraft cabin would account for nearly 60 per cent of the plane’s value.
At the same time, selling the aircraft to an ultra-wealthy customer as a private jet could potentially take two years and lose 30 per cent of the aircraft’s value.
Nonetheless, that’s exactly what the Obrador administration attempted for over a year as the idled plane racked up huge maintenance costs. No buyer was found. So the government dreamt up a new plan – a public raffle with the plane as first prize.
Obrador hoped the raffle would generate enough proceeds to cover maintenance costs for the first couple of years – a sweetener to the grand prize winner. Unsurprisingly, the raffle never actually came to fruition.
Still stuck with the 787, Obrador now hopes to cover the costs of owning the plane by renting it out for weddings, parties and quinceañeras.
It may seem bizarre but this is one idea that might realistically make the Mexican government some money. Meanwhile, Obrador will carry on flying commercial.
