Emergency slide deploys on Trump’s Qatari Air Force One

President Donald Trump’s lavish, Qatari-donated presidential jet appeared to have a problem Wednesday afternoon before a planned flight to Dallas. Its emergency slide was inflated on the tarmac.

Video from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland showed the slide extending from a front door on the aircraft’s right side as Marine One sat nearby with Trump apparently still aboard.

The traditional blue-and-white Air Force One was then moved from its hangar and positioned several hundred yards behind the Qatari jet. Crews deployed that aircraft’s front and rear stairs, according to a White House pool report from AFP correspondent Danny Kemp.

Marine One landed at 2:01 p.m., but its door had not opened as of 2:19 p.m. The White House had not explained the delay, the slide deployment or whether Trump would switch aircraft.

It was unclear whether the slide was deployed accidentally, during maintenance, or because of a problem aboard the jet.

The scene carried echoes of Trump’s extraordinary plane-switching operation in Turkey in July. After intelligence agencies detected a possible Iranian plot to target the president’s aircraft, Trump publicly boarded the traditional Air Force One — then slipped off through a catering truck and transferred to a smaller Air Force C-32A.

The older presidential 747 departed as a decoy carrying senior officials and members of the traveling press, many of whom were not told that Trump was no longer aboard. The Washington Post first reported the operation.

Trump had arrived in Turkey aboard the Qatari plane, whose accelerated conversion and undisclosed defensive capabilities have faced scrutiny. He later said the jet would be taken offline for about a month to be “maxed out,” although experts questioned whether substantial protections could be added so quickly.

Qatar donated the Boeing 747-8, valued at about $400 million, to the Defense Department. The government has spent hundreds of millions more converting it into a temporary presidential aircraft.

Trump was scheduled to address the Republican Midterm Convention in Dallas on Wednesday night. At 2:50 p.m., Kemp wrote in another pool report, "AF1 is rolling — the slide issue hopefully having been sorted — so we will be wheels up shortly."