President-elect Donald Trump received an unexpected offer from Antonov, the manufacturer of the world's largest aircraft in Ukraine, in a tweet. Antonov offered to sell Trump one of its large aircrafts to replace Air Force One (AF1) after Trump tweeted an order to "scrap" plans to purchase a new plane from Boeing for around $4 billion. In that tweet,
Trump acknowledged that Boeing was planning to produce the outrageously expensive aircraft; but that the costs were "out of control." Trump then ended the tweet with the order: "Cancel order!"
@realDonaldTrump May be it is better to consider #Antonov aircraft as Air Force One?
— Antonov Company 🇺🇦 (@AntonovCompany) December 7, 2016
How much is $4 billion?
Four billion dollars is four thousand, million dollars.
To put it into perspective, a $200 million urban hotel would cost one fifth of one billion dollars (five hotels per one billion dollars). Then if you were to multiply that times 4, it would come to 20 hotels altogether. And so one $4 billion jet would cost the same as 20 urban hotels, each costing $200 million! (Ironically, Trump now is having to sell his urban hotel, the Trump International Hotel, before he takes office. It is worth well over $200 billion though).
To bring the comparison more down to Earth, the aircraft would cost the same as 16,000 homes each costing $250,000 (4 houses per million x 1,000 = 4,000 houses per billion dollars X4 = 16,000 houses!). As anyone can see from this simple math, Boeing's costs are outrageous and beyond reason.
It is unknown what the exact costs of Antonov's aircraft would be, but it undoubtedly would be much less prohibitive than are Boeing's costs.
No contract so far
To date, no contract for the building of the new aircraft has been signed between the Obama Administration and Boeing. So far, all that the Administration has done is pay Boeing $170 million to determine the feasibility of building a new fleet of White House aircraft, including a new Air Force One.
Antonov's largest aircraft thus far is the Antonov-225 Mriya cargo plane, which is not a passenger jet. Of course, Air Force One would have to be a luxury passenger jet with offices, briefing rooms, a kitchen, a nuclear command center and other many other things.
Firing of Michael Flynn, Jr.
Meanwhile, Trump has had a busy week.
In addition to taking a call from the the President of Taiwan and violating the "one China policy" and setting off an international firestorm, the befuddled President-elect also fired Michael Flynn, Jr. from his transition team for intensifying the Washington, D.C. "Pizzagate" scandal with a series of inflammatory tweets. And the announcement of Trump's nominee for Secretary of State is promised within the next week; not one boring moment in the Trump Transition world.
