When Qatar donated a Boeing jet for use as a temporary Air Force One, President Trump said the luxury plane would come with him when he left office — but only as a display at his presidential library.

Those plans appear to have changed.

A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject, said on Wednesday that no final decision has been made about which plane will go to the library.

Earlier this week, Mr. Trump’s son Eric, who is heavily involved with developing the library, told NBC News in a text message that it was “not the plan at the moment” to bring the Qatari jet to the library, which is planned for downtown Miami.

One person with knowledge of the discussions said that Mr. Trump had been considering decommissioning one of the two older Air Force One jets to display at the library, but that he also planned to take the Qatari jet as well. It was unclear if that plan was still in consideration.

Mr. Trump’s decision to accept the $400 million jet has raised security and ethical concerns, about the rushed job to retrofit the plane into a presidential aircraft and about the propriety of taking such a gift from a foreign government.

The president has insisted that the plane is a gift to the U.S. Department of Defense — and not him personally — and that he would not use it after he leaves office.

Mr. Trump has spoken of the plane as a new symbol of American strength and grandeur since he first toured it in February 2025. It is also significantly newer than his own private plane, a Boeing 757 known informally as Trump Force One.

The Qatari jet has cost hundreds of millions of dollars to retrofit, although the exact cost has not been made public. After questions emerged about whether the plane has sufficient defensive capabilities to serve as Air Force One, the White House said it would be taken out of service for about one month this fall for unspecified “additional upgrades and enhancements.”

Asked in May 2025 if he planned to attempt to take the donated Qatari jet for his own personal use as a still-operating airplane once he left office, Mr. Trump said: “It would go directly to the library after I leave office. I wouldn’t be using it. No.”

The White House and the Justice Department jointly signed a memo last year, which was never made public, asserting that it was legal for the federal government to accept the gift, which would then be transferred to the Trump presidential library.

The Qatari jet has been described as a “bridge” plane for presidential travel as the Air Force awaits the two long-delayed planes that were commissioned from Boeing to replace the existing Air Force One jets.

At least inside the Air Force, no decision has been made over the fate of the Qatari plane, one Air Force official said Wednesday. The possibilities include its continued use as a third Air Force One, after Boeing delivers its two new planes starting in 2028, or it could be used by other federal government officials for government travel.

The retrofitted Qatari plane is now owned by the U.S. government, White House and Air Force officials have said.

Before either the retrofitted Qatari plane or the soon-to-be retired 747 jets flown as Air Force One since the early 1990s could be donated or transferred to an outside party, they would have to be designed officially by the government as excess property, a Pentagon official said Wednesday.

The Air Force secretary, in consultation with the office of the Secretary of Defense, then controls what happens to them, a Pentagon official said Wednesday.

Typically, that involves first offering the aircraft for use by other government agencies or even the National Guard. But eventually the plane can be donated if it is being entirely taken out of service.

The last time the Air Force formally retired one of its Air Force One official presidential planes, a request came in from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation to donate the retired Boeing 707 jet to the Reagan library in California, which was approved in August 2001, by then Air Force Secretary James G. Roche.

The Reagan library model is one that Trump officials have referred to as the framework for what Mr. Trump had wanted.

“It’s something that was done by Ronald Reagan: they actually decommissioned the plane and they put it in his library,” Mr. Trump said in May 2025, about the possible donation to Mr. Trump’s own future library, offering his own incorrect version of this history. “It has actually made the library more successful, so it was good.”