It is the most modern model of the Boeing 747 ever produced: the 747-8. It is a BBJ (Boeing Business Jet), a heavily modified version of the Boeing jets intended for government and corporate customers. With a range of over 16,000 kilometers and a cabin area of over 460 square meters, the jet is unrivaled among business jets.
Just ten of these four-engine BBJ machines were built, one of them for the Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud. However, he died in 2011, just a few months before the scheduled extradition.
The aircraft first flew in May 2012 for test purposes and was officially handed over to the Saudi Arabian government in June 2012. After that, it is said to have flown for a few months via San Bernardino and San Antonio in Texas and finally landed in Basel in December 2012. Connor Diver, a senior analyst at aeronautical analysis firm Cirium, suspects Basel was supposed to be installing the missing interior on the plane. "It never happened. And it looks like it's been there for 10 years," Diver told CNN.
The machine should be sold in 2017 – for just 95 million dollars. According to Diver, the original purchase price was around $350 million. The machine then for sale was still empty and "ready for conversion," according to an online sales brochure. However, no buyer was found.
"No one but a Saudi leader is going to want a private four-engine business jet," said Richard Aboulafia, aviation analyst at AeroDynamic Advisory. "You can't just convert an airplane into a cargo plane, and nobody wants a passenger version. Consequently, the parts, and especially the engines, are worth far more than the airplane."
According to CNN, Boeing reportedly bought back the plane in 2022 from an aircraft trading company called Aircraft Finance Germany. The machine flew to Arizona on April 15, 2022. This 10-hour flight was arguably the 16th and last flight of the Boeing 747-8, which only served 30 hours in its lifetime.
At the Pinal Airpark in Arizona - an aircraft graveyard - a Boeing subcontractor is currently working on the dismantling of the most valuable individual parts of the aircraft. Conor Diver says the engines have already been removed. "They were practically brand new and each one of them is probably worth around $20 million, so four of them would be around $80 million," he says.
The nine other BBJs are still operated by the governments of Egypt, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman, Qatar and Turkey, according to Diver. The lifespan of a 747 aircraft is typically 25 to 30 years - well beyond that of an aircraft that has only flown 16 times and sat around for ten years.
Sources: CNN, Manager Magazine
