Mexicans will no longer have to worry about where to park a Boeing Dreamliner when the government raffles off the luxurious presidential jet: the air force will keep it.
In fact, nobody will win the actual $130m Boeing 787 in the lottery-style raffle to be held in coming months.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said last month that he was considering raffling off the jet by selling 6m raffle tickets at $25 apiece, but the plan was widely lampooned on social media.
On Friday, he said the competition would actually award total prize money of $100m, which lottery tickets state is “equivalent to the value of the presidential jet”.
One hundred winners will divide equal shares of the $100m pot.
“We did not want to award a prize that would be a problem,” López Obrador said. “You know, the memes – ‘Where would I park it?’”
The government still hopes to sell about 6m tickets, which would raise about $150m. The remaining money will pay to keep the airplane in flight condition while López Obrador tries to sell or rent it. Any net proceeds would go to buy medical equipment.
Even before he took office last year, the Mexican leader made selling off the luxurious presidential jet a centerpiece of his austerity program. López Obrador flies tourist class on commercial flights and views the jet, bought for more than $200m by his predecessor, as wasteful.
But the plane failed to find a buyer after a year on sale at a US airstrip, where it piled up about $1.5m in maintenance costs.
The jet is expensive to run and is configured to carry only 80 people, with a full presidential suite with a bedroom and private bath. Experts say it would be too expensive to reconfigure back into a commercial airliner that normally carries as many as 300 passengers.
Previously, López Obrador had suggested bartering the plane in exchange for US medical equipment or selling it in shares to a group of businessmen for executive incentive programs. He has also offered to rent it out by the hour, in hopes of paying off the remainder of outstanding loans on the plane.