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MEXICO-POLITICS-OFFBEAT
Mexico businessman wants to buy presidential plane for $99 mln
MEXICO CITY, Aug 24, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Mexico’s leftist president-elect
wants to sell the jetliner that comes with the job, calling it a wasteful
luxury.
Now, he has a potential buyer who wants to use it as an uber-posh taxi for
presidents, or guys like Mick Jagger.
This businessman, one Gustavo Jimenez Pons, made the offer Thursday at
president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s office, the newspaper Reforma
reported.
People seeking favors or other things from the new leader line up outside
his office every day. Jimenez Pons, who is offering $99 million for the 300-
seat Boeing Dreamliner 787, showed up and had to get in line like everybody
else.
What he’s offering would be a cut rate price: Reforma said the plane is
valued at $220 million.
Jimenez Pons wants to use it as a taxi, to the tune of $20,000 per hour.
His idea, Reforma said, is to rent the aircraft out to “presidents of other
countries who do not have private planes, or rock groups like the Rolling
Stones,” added the daily El Universal.
Lopez Obrador, who won a landslide victory in elections in July and will
take power on December 1, has said he will never use the plane and wants to
sell it, and will not use any private aircraft for that matter.
The executive jetliner was purchased in 2016 by the outgoing president,
Enrique Pena Nieto, who spruced it up with sophisticated communications gear
and a special rest area for the president.
In Mexico, selling the plane is seen as a tall order, given the small
market for people who want to buy a jetliner.
Newspapers seemed to express surprise that Jimenez Pons, despite what he
said he had in mind, had to wait in line with people seeking favors, jobs or
money from Lopez Obrador.
Jimenez Pons ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Mexico City in 2006.
And in the last election cycle, he tried to run for president as an
independent but failed to muster the signatures needed to get on the ballot.
BSS/AFP/MR/ 1230 hrs