State plane makes inaugural flight to US for PM’s visit; will have to come back for him
Wing of Zion carries equipment and some of Netanyahu’s security delegation; it’ll fly out again next week with PM on board; is too small to have done it all in one go
Lazar Berman is The Times of Israel's diplomatic reporter
Israel’s state airplane Wing of Zion — referred to locally as “Israel’s Air Force One” — took off for the US on Tuesday in its first official flight, after several years of collecting dust on the Nevatim Airbase.
The inaugural flight departed Israel ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip next week to the US, where he will meet with President Joe Biden and address a joint session of Congress.
The plane was carrying equipment needed for Netanyahu’s visit, as well as some members of his security delegation, who had to travel ahead due to space limitations on the plane.
Earlier this month, the Prime Minister’s Office was informed that Wing of Zion has just 60 seats on board, falling far short of the 80-100 seats that would be needed for the prime minister’s entourage of aides, guards and journalists, the Kan public broadcaster reported.
Rather than have a portion of the delegation fly to the US on a commercial carrier, it was decided that the Wing of Zion would make two separate trips, almost a week apart.
According to sources familiar with the details, the cost of each transcontinental flight is more than $200,000.
Sources in the PMO blamed Israel Aerospace Industries for constructing a plane that didn’t meet the prime minister’s needs, and accused it of failing to complete the necessary preparations ahead of its first flight. In response, the IAI told Kan that the plane “will fly at the set time, with maximum safety, and is ready for the mission after it passed all its readiness checks from A to Z.”
Years of controversy
The plane, a reconfigured and upgraded Boeing 767, was caught up in delays and political fighting for several years after it was commissioned back in 2014.
It arrived in Israel in 2016, and the conversion — said to cost around NIS 750 million ($207 million — was largely completed by 2019, when the plane conducted its first test flight.
At the end of its extensive renovations, the plane was said to include a private office for the prime minister, a bedroom with a bathroom and shower, a fully stocked kitchen, a meeting room and even a “war room.”
Netanyahu’s opponents have long argued that the plane, intended for the use of Israeli heads of state and government, is a waste of taxpayer money, and have branded it a symbol of corruption, while his supporters have defended it as a necessary safety measure.
Although the plane was approved for use toward the end of 2021, then-prime minister Naftali Bennett declined to use it. Yair Lapid, then Bennett’s coalition partner, campaigned vocally against it, declaring that it represented “everything that was corrupt and broken in the Netanyahu government.”
Months later, the Defense Ministry, under the authority of Benny Gantz, announced that it was placing the plane in storage on the Nevatim Airbase, pending a decision as to what its future would look like.
The project was revived by Netanyahu following his return to office in December 2022 but the plane remained on the Air Force base, rather than returning to the IAI hangar at Ben Gurion Airport.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
