At a press conference in Qatar on Wednesday, President Donald Trump announced a $96 billion deal between Boeing, an American plane manufacturer, and Airways for as many as 210 jets. The agreement, which was signed by the two companies’ CEOs as they flanked Mr. Trump and Qatar’s emir, was Boeing’s “largest ever” order for those types of aircraft.
According to the White House, it would support more than 1 million U.S. jobs “during the course of production and delivery.” The timetable for delivery, however, was not mentioned.
Boeing has been beset by serious production delays in recent years, as the company has grappled with safety issues, worker strikes, a pandemic, and supply chain woes. The company’s problems have been a particular source of irritation for the president.
Why We Wrote This
Boeing just won a huge contract from Qatar. But mistakes and delays – including on replacement Air Force One jets – symbolize reputational challenges not just for the company but also for U.S. technological prowess.
Since retaking office in January, Mr. Trump has publicly criticized Boeing on several occasions, saying he was “very disappointed” by a multi-year delay on two new presidential planes to replace the current Air Force One fleet that’s been in use since the presidency of George H.W. Bush. Boeing’s $3.9 billion contract with the U.S. Air Force in 2018 promised the two planes by 2024, but that has been pushed to sometime between 2027 and 2029 – a holdup that perhaps encouraged Mr. Trump to look for an alternative solution.
The president’s announcement over the weekend that he planned to accept a luxury Boeing 747-8 jet from Qatar, to use temporarily as the new Air Force One, set off a firestorm of criticism – and not just from the left.
Lawmakers and pundits on both sides of the aisle said the unprecedented foreign gift almost certainly would violate the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which prohibits office holders from accepting any present from a “King, Prince, or foreign State” without the consent of Congress. In addition, many argued, allowing a Qatari plane to serve as the president’s office in the air would represent a serious national security threat.
Behind the controversy, however, lies a real problem for both the country’s defense system and the economy. As demand for aircraft has increased at home and around the world, Boeing, America’s top exporting company and the U.S. counterpart to Europe’s Airbus, is struggling to make planes safely and on time. Even when they’re needed to replace the commander-in-chief’s decades-old models.
“Look at the defense side of the [Boeing] business, and just about every program is way over budget and delayed,” says Scott Hamilton, managing director at Leeham Company, an aviation consultancy firm. “It’s a big issue for national security and our balance of trade.”
Brandon Lingle/The San Antonio Express-News/AP
There’s the T-7 Red Hawks, a Boeing trainer aircraft designed to replace the aging T-38s that the Air Force signed a contract for in 2018, that have been delayed by several years. Boeing’s MQ-25 tanker drone has been delayed by a year, and there is still “a ton of work” to do to fly the aircraft this year, a U.S. Navy vice admiral said last month.
And when the Boeing Starliner took off for the International Space Station in June of 2024 with two astronauts, the intended eight-day mission turned into nine months when the Starliner was deemed unsafe for a return flight. In March, the two astronauts hitched a ride home with a rocket from Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Boeing isn’t the only U.S. defense contractor struggling to deliver on time, says Todd Harrison, an aerospace and defense analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. But it stands out for the sheer number of delays and cost overruns that have come, as its civil aviation division has also stumbled amid safety concerns over its 737 Max airliners. Airbus, the world’s other major plane manufacturer, has outpaced Boeing for the past five years.
As America’s biggest exporter, Boeing has also been hit by the tariffs recently imposed by Mr. Trump. Aircraft manufacturers run global supply chains and rely on imported parts from multiple countries. By Mr. Hamilton’s calculations, “Boeing stands to lose a lot more than Airbus” with the tariffs.
All the modifications required for the VC-25b, the aircraft that is designated as Air Force One, are carried out by Boeing alone, which must equip the plane to be able to operate during a nuclear conflict, among other specialized requirements. Critics of Mr. Trump’s proposal to repurpose the luxury Qatar 747 as Air Force One say the time and money it would take to refit the aircraft – and to inspect and certify it as fully secure – far outweigh the benefits of the $400 million “gift.”
Boeing signed a fixed-cost contract to deliver the two new presidential aircraft in 2018, which means that the company has to eat the cost overruns. “They have every incentive to deliver this on time – but it doesn’t seem to be working,” says Mr. Harrison.
Air Force One is not Boeing’s biggest defense program and, in dollar terms, is dwarfed by the Qatar Airways deal and other commercial orders. But it’s a high-profile order that has incurred the wrath of the commander-in-chief and has shone a harsh spotlight on the company. “This is a huge reputational issue for Boeing,” says Mr. Harrison.
It’s also a huge issue for the U.S. defense industry, he adds. “What this shows more broadly is that our defense industrial base in many areas has narrowed to just one or two potential companies. Boeing is the only U.S. company that makes wide-body aircraft.”
While the Qatar deal announced Wednesday is good news for a company that has not posted an annual profit since 2018, Mr. Hamilton is skeptical that the contracted fleet of 787 Dreamliner and 777x planes will be produced anytime soon. Although Boeing planned to release the 777x to airlines in 2020, this version of Boeing’s wide-body jet is still awaiting approval from the Federal Aviation Administration. And the 787 Dreamliner, which has flown more than 1 billion passengers, more than any other wide-body commercial airplane in history, faces a backlog in production that by some estimates will take a decade to clear.
“It’s taken Boeing three decades to get into the predicament it’s in,” says Mr. Hamilton. Which means getting out of it likely won’t be quick, either.
The past seven years have been particularly damaging. Two deadly crashes in 2018 and 2019, caused by a new automated control system in Boeing’s 737 Max, led the U.S. FAA and regulators around the world to ground the plane for almost two years.
The start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when the demand for flying and new planes plummeted, led to thousands of layoffs at Boeing and more financial losses. An FAA-ordered grounding of other Boeing jets because of manufacturing concerns; a January 2024 incident when a side panel ripped off the body of a plane minutes after takeoff; and a whistleblower’s complaint a few months later, only further eroded trust in the company.
For Mr. Trump, the issue also seems to be a matter of comfort and style. The president has implied that the current presidential planes, in service for more than three decades, are embarrassingly old and not befitting the leader of the free world.
“You look at some of the Arab countries and the planes they have parked alongside the United States of America plane, it’s like from a different planet,” Mr. Trump has said.
