Mexico’s presidential plane , a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, will arrive at the Mexico City airport on Thursday; however, the airplane is still up for sale.
Sources confirmed the return of the airplane and said President Andrés Manuel López Obrador may hold a news conference at the hangar where authorities will keep the airplane.
On June 13, Jorge Mendoza Sánchez, the director of the National Bank of Public Works and Services ( Banobras ), said there was an offer to sell the Boeing 787 Dreamliner for USD 120 million in cash and medical equipment.
The Banobras director said he couldn’t provide more details for confidentiality reasons but said the purchase process continues.
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Mendoza Sánchez said: “Regarding the presidential airplane, we received an offer in April. The process is ongoing. We received an offer of USD 120 million, which is around MXN 2,697 million. The offer includes cash and medical equipment, but due to confidentiality reasons, we can’t provide more details during this stage of the process, but be sure that we will reveal it when it is possible.”
When President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office in December 2018, he announced the airplane would be put up for sale and asked United Nations for help to find a buyer.
The airplane was transported to California but Mexican authorities have not been able to sell it.
President López Obrador later came up with the idea to raffle the airplane but latter announced the government would raffle the Boeing 787 Dreamliner’s price and not the place itself.
The Mexican President previously said 100 winners would get USD 1 million each, rather than the plane itself.
In February, it was reported that Mexico would raffle the luxurious presidential plane despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
The winning tickets will be announced on September 15, the day before Mexican Independence Day.
In a news conference, the president announced that the profits generated by the raffle will be used to purchase medical equipment for public hospitals.
Six million tickets were issued for the raffle of the luxurious aircraft and there will be 100 prizes of MXN 20 million each. Each ticket costs MXN 500 and the raffle will be held at the National Lottery’s building in Mexico City.
The raffle is expected to generate a profit of MXN 3 billion.
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The controversial airplane
López Obrador often describes the airplane as a symbol of excess and corruption in previous governments.
Mexico’s presidential plane was purchased by former President Felipe Calderón at the end of his term. It was used by former President Enrique Peña Nieto, while López Obrador refused to use it.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador widely criticized the purchase of the luxurious airplane and said it was immoral for the President to travel in a custom-made airplane while Mexicans live in poverty.
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.
The analysis was released by the previous administration in January 2016. It explains that the as a result of the characteristics of the market and the complex on that context, there was an important risk that the airplane would not be sold in 12 months and warns that if the Boeing 787-8 is sold within the private airplanes market in 24 months, the economic loss over its original purchase price would increase to USD 65.9 million and USD 76.26 million is it was sold in January 2019.
Meanwhile, a projection of “future valuations” in the commercial airline market shows that in January 2016, the presidential plane could have been sold for USD 90.44 million and USD 88.9 million in January 2017, at least USD 129.76 million less than its original price. By January 2018, it would sell for USD 85.2 million and USD 81.6 million in 2019. It was not a good deal to purchase the Boeing 787-8.
In July 2018, EL UNIVERSAL published that experts warned the selling the airplane was not the best option since its price would depreciate between 5% and 8% every year and that it would be sold for up to 30% of its original price.
Additionally, Felipe Calderón’s administration requested modifications and equipment that increased the price of the plane by USD 218.7 million, which gives a total of USD 2,952.4 million.
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