Alberto Fernández signed the purchase of a new presidential plane for Argentina

The total cost of the operation is US$25 million. The previous Tango 01, a Boeing 757-200, will be delivered as part of the payment for an amount of US$3 million. Of the remaining US$22 million that the Government will pay, US$12 million will be financed over 10 years through a loan from the Andean Development Corporation.

The tender for the purchase of the aircraft has been open for almost two years. The process is supervised by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the newspaper La Nación reported.

Sources from the Presidency also indicated that the plane, with a capacity for 39 passengers, can “land at any airport in the world” and that it can be used for at least the next 30 years, with which its acquisition is considered “savings” for the state.

The agreement for the new presidential plane to travel abroad had been advanced by the Noticias Argentinas medium on November 23. From the Casa Rosada they had indicated that they wanted to repair the previous Tango 01, but the ICAO suggested the purchase of a new plane through “a contract of the aeronautical regime, in which you deliver an aircraft in the form of payment.”

The Boeing 757-256 that the Argentine government will acquire is from the year 2000. Originally it was a passenger plane, until in 2006 it was bought by a US citizen to use as an executive plane. It has a main bedroom and two others that can also be used as rooms.

The plane “is at the top of all the technological requirements of modern planes. For example, it would allow the president to have constant communication with the outside world, something that currently does not happen,” they said from Casa Rosada.

The previous Tango 01 was acquired in 1992 during the Government of Carlos Menem (1989-1999) for US$66 million and is currently inoperative. It has not flown since December 2015 and the last major inspection was carried out in July 2016 according to TN.

To preserve it in minimum conditions, the Argentine State pays about US$220,000 per year, which corresponds to a low-use maintenance program provided by Boeing, in addition to insurance and other inputs used for aircraft maintenance operations.

With information from Sputnik

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