As catnip for a high-end mendicant like Donald Trump, the Boeing 747-8 is unbeatable. It’s an exquisite machine, a perfect consummation of form and function and last in a line of one of the greatest airplanes ever built. It’s also a haunting specter for Boeing of a supremacy it achieved and then lost.

The jet costs $23,000 an hour to operate, according to Corporate Jet Investor — which is probably why the Qataris’ gift to Trump flew only 1,069 hours in the five years before it was put on the market in 2020, according to Forbes’ report.

State carrier Qatar Airways signed a deal on Wednesday to purchase up to 210 widebody jets from Boeing during President Donald Trump's visit to the Gulf Arab country, a coup for the U.S. planemaker. The deal for Boeing 777X and 787 planes with GE Aerospace engines was worth $96 billion,