April 21, 2023, 6:44 AM
April 21, 2023, 6:44 AM
After more than four years for sale, the luxurious and controversial presidential plane of Mexico finally has an owner.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) announced this Thursday that the government of Tajikistan paid just over 1,658 million pesos (about US$92 million) for the aircraft that former president Felipe Calderón bought and later launched by his successor Enrique Peña Nieto.
Through a video recorded on board the plane and published on his Twitter account, AMLO assured that the amount was set “in accordance with the current official appraisal.” When purchased in 2012, however, the aircraft cost US$218 million.
According to the president, the money will go to the Institute to Return the Stolen to the People and will be used to build “two hospitals than 80 beds in the poorest areas of Mexico”.
Both facilities will be built by military engineers in Tlapa, in the state of Guerrero; and in Tuxtepec, Oaxaca; and inaugurated before he concludes his term in October 2024, the president assured. The authorities of the Asian country have ten days to take the plane.
Hours before, AMLO had already announced in his morning conference that there was a possible buyer of the aircraft that has been for sale since December 2, 2018, just one day after he became president.
“After a long time it was possible to sell this plane“, acknowledged the president. “We are happy, we are like the nouveau riche who buy a yacht or an airplane like this and are only happy the day they open it and the day they sell it.”
Headache
Selling the “José María Morelos y Pavón” Boeing 787-8 plane, which became one of AMLO’s electoral promises, was later one of his big headaches.
He luxury inside the plane (it has marble finishes, bathrooms and a presidential bedroom) was criticized by the president, who identified it as a symbol of the waste of previous governments.
But, at the same time, this was one of the reasons why it was so difficult to find a buyer for such a personalized model.
Although stayed for more than a year in a private hangar in the United States for its sale, no proposal came to prosper.
In 2020, the aircraft returned to Mexico to avoid high maintenance costs abroad.
In September of that same year, AMLO decided to “raffle” the plane among the population through a symbolic raffle, since what was really at stake was the money equivalent to the value of the plane at that time.
AMLO announced that the proceeds from ticket purchases would go toward purchasing medical equipment for hospitals. However, given the lower-than-expected sales rate, the government ended up buying close to a million tickets to distribute among medical centers, on the condition that the money be invested in improving their conditions if they were awarded.
At the end of 2022, the president announced that the plane would be delivered to the Ministry of Defense to be part of the fleet of the new Mexicana de Aviación company. With its sale this Thursday, however, this intention will not finally materialize.
“We already took off this earring because what a we had a hard time finding a client. But hey, there was, “she stressed. “We will continue to talk about this topic. We never used it ourselves, but I would have been sorry, I mean it sincerely, to use this plane.”
AMLO assured that more details would be given in the coming days about how expensive its maintenance was and how little useful it was.
The director of the National Bank of Public Works and Services (Banobras), Jorge Mendoza, explained in the same video on board the plane that the sale will also generate savings of 332 million pesos (US$18.4 million) that the government had to pay to its agency as a lease.
The resources, he said, will be returned to the Treasury to be used for Health projects.
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