Trump administration poised to accept 'palace in the sky' as a gift for Trump from Qatar: Sources

[VMA131Marine]

32. One of the reasons presidential aircraft are so expensive

Is that the people who build and maintain them have to undergo extensive screening and background checks, which won’t be the case for this plane. As others have mentioned, integrating the communications and security systems into the aircraft is also not trivial nor cheap, which is why it’s taken Boeing so long to produce the new AF1 from aircraft that were already built; it would have been easier and cheaper to build new from the start because the actual cost of the airframe is trivial compared to the upgrades that need to be made.
I’m not seeing how the Secret Service ever lets Trump fly on this thing or would if he were a “normal” President.