Aircraft Costs — What Every Plane in This Case Costs New
Every aircraft in this investigation, priced as if you walked into a factory today and bought one. 33 airframes. Roughly $1.10 billion at current list prices.
That number is the point of this page. The following-planes claim is often argued as though a jet showing up somewhere is a light thing. It is not. A Falcon 7X parked at a regional Utah airport for six days is a $58 million asset sitting idle, with a crew on per-diem, in a place with no scheduled reason to be. Whatever the explanation turns out to be — maintenance, diplomacy, or something else — it is an expensive explanation. Cost is context, and this page supplies it.
How these figures were built
Most of the aircraft in this case are no longer in production. A 1974 Navajo Chieftain and a 1998 Gulfstream V cannot be bought new at any price. So each figure is derived one of two ways, and the method is named in every row:
- Still in production → the current manufacturer list price for that exact type.
- Out of production → the list price of the named in-production successor, matched on cabin size, range, and mission. The comparable is stated so you can disagree with the choice.
Three cautions, stated up front:
- List price is a green airframe. Interior completion, avionics options, and mission equipment are extra. On the government aircraft that gap is enormous — a C-32A is a $76M Boeing before anyone installs a secure communications suite.
- Nobody pays list. Fleet buyers negotiate. Treat these as ceilings for a single-unit retail purchase.
- Successor pricing cuts both ways. A new G600 is more capable than the 1998 Gulfstream V it stands in for. The figure answers "what would it cost to buy this capability new today," not "what is this specific used aircraft worth."
Types and registration details for the N-registered aircraft come from the FAA Civil Aviation Registry — the complete releasable database, queried directly. Where this page and older commentary disagree on an N-registered aircraft type, the registry wins. The Egyptian SU- tails are on a foreign registry that publishes no equivalent public file, so their types are the researcher-reported ones and carry the uncertainty noted on each aircraft page.
The full table
Egyptian-registered jets — the armada
| Tail | Aircraft type | Built | Still in production? | Priced against | Cost to buy new today |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SU-BTT | Dassault Falcon 7X | 2014 | No | Dassault Falcon 8X | ~$58-60 million |
| SU-BND | Gulfstream G550 (trackers also cite Gulfstream IV-SP) | — | No | Gulfstream G600 | ~$58.8 million |
| SU-BTU | Dassault Falcon 7X | — | No | Dassault Falcon 8X | ~$58-60 million |
| SU-BTV | Dassault Falcon 7X | — | No | Dassault Falcon 8X | ~$58-60 million |
| SU-BGM | Gulfstream IV | — | No | Gulfstream G500 | ~$45 million |
| T7ELL | Not established | — | Unknown | Not estimable | Not estimable |
| EJM36 | Not established — reads as an Executive Jet Management callsign, not a registration | — | Unknown | Not estimable | Not estimable |
US Army ISR — the HADES / LASAI fleet
| Tail | Aircraft type | Built | Still in production? | Priced against | Cost to buy new today |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| N1098L | Bombardier BD-700-1A10 (Global 6500) | 2023 | Yes | Bombardier Global 6500 (same type) | ~$56-58 million |
| N2100L | Bombardier BD-700-1A10 (Global 6500) | 2023 | Yes | Bombardier Global 6500 (same type) | ~$56-58 million |
| N9PS | Bombardier BD-700-1A10 (Global 6000) | 2012 | No | Bombardier Global 6500 | ~$56-58 million |
| N808LP | Bombardier BD-700-1A10 (Global 6500) | 2023 | Yes | Bombardier Global 6500 (same type) | ~$56-58 million |
| N159L | Bombardier CL-600-2B16 (Challenger 650) | 2020 | Yes | Bombardier Challenger 650 (same type) | ~$32 million |
| N488CR | Bombardier CL-600-2B16 (Challenger 650) | 2019 | Yes | Bombardier Challenger 650 (same type) | ~$32 million |
| N291AS | Raytheon B300 (King Air 350) | 2001 | No | Beechcraft King Air 360 | ~$8.4 million |
| N35GA | Raytheon B300 (King Air 350) | 2004 | No | Beechcraft King Air 360 | ~$8.4 million |
| N405WK | Raytheon B300 (King Air 350) | 2004 | No | Beechcraft King Air 360 | ~$8.4 million |
| N506KB | Raytheon B300 (King Air 350) | 2006 | No | Beechcraft King Air 360 | ~$8.4 million |
| N828CJ | Raytheon B300 (King Air 350) | 2004 | No | Beechcraft King Air 360 | ~$8.4 million |
| N888FM | Raytheon B300 (King Air 350) | 2004 | No | Beechcraft King Air 360 | ~$8.4 million |
Government VIP transports
| Tail | Aircraft type | Built | Still in production? | Priced against | Cost to buy new today |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 99-0404 | US Air Force C-37A (Gulfstream V) | — | No | Gulfstream G600 (USAF now buys the C-37B/G550-derived airframe) | ~$58.8 million |
| 99-0004 | US Air Force C-32A (Boeing 757-200) | — | No | Boeing BBJ MAX 7 | ~$76.5 million |
| N708JH | Gulfstream GV-SP (G550) | 2019 | No | Gulfstream G600 | ~$58.8 million |
Kirk, TPUSA-adjacent and donor aircraft
| Tail | Aircraft type | Built | Still in production? | Priced against | Cost to buy new today |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| N102DZ | Gulfstream Aerospace G-V (Gulfstream V) | 1998 | No | Gulfstream G600 | ~$58.8 million |
| N582MM | Learjet Inc 60 | 2001 | No | Embraer Praetor 500 | ~$18.4 million |
| N560TW | Cessna 560XL (Citation XLS) | 2005 | No | Cessna Citation XLS Gen2 | ~$15.5 million |
| N888KG | Bombardier BD-100-1A10 (Challenger 300) | 2013 | No | Bombardier Challenger 3500 | ~$26.7 million |
Provo arrivals and other private tails
| Tail | Aircraft type | Built | Still in production? | Priced against | Cost to buy new today |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| N40JD | Raytheon Aircraft Company 390 (Premier I) | — | No | Cessna Citation CJ3 Gen2 | ~$11 million |
| N872RA | Hawker Beechcraft 400A (Beechjet 400A) | 2008 | No | Cessna Citation M2 Gen2 | ~$5.7 million |
| N685QS | Cessna 560XL (Citation XLS) | 2006 | No | Cessna Citation XLS Gen2 | ~$15.5 million |
| N360BE | Gulfstream GIV-X (G450) | 2006 | No | Gulfstream G500 | ~$45 million |
| N885LS | Boeing 737-7EL (BBJ) | 2001 | No | Boeing BBJ MAX 7 | ~$76.5 million |
Small aircraft and rotorcraft
| Tail | Aircraft type | Built | Still in production? | Priced against | Cost to buy new today |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| N59906 | Piper PA-31-350 (Navajo Chieftain) | 1974 | No | Beechcraft Baron G58 | ~$1.5 million |
| N55906 | Piper PA-28R-200 (Cherokee Arrow) | 1973 | No | Piper Archer LX | ~$0.5 million |
| N315NG | Pilatus PC-12/47E | 2011 | No | Pilatus PC-12 PRO | ~$6.8 million |
| N155TV | Bell 206L-3 (LongRanger III) | 1990 | No | Bell 407GXi | ~$3.5-4 million |
What the numbers show
The cheapest aircraft in the investigation is N55906 at about $0.5 million — a 1973 four-seat Piper Cherokee Arrow registered to a private individual in Winter Park, Florida. It is a single-engine piston trainer. It appears on this site because an investigator flagged it as a "second aircraft of interest" alongside the Army's ISR jet. A new one costs roughly one one-hundred-and-sixteenth of the Global 6500 it was listed beside. That mismatch is worth weighing when judging the claim.
The most expensive is the C-32A that carried Charlie Kirk's casket — a Boeing 757-200 whose in-production equivalent, the BBJ MAX 7, lists at $76.5 million before a government VIP fit-out that would push it past $100 million.
The Egyptian armada, priced as a fleet, is roughly $290 million of aircraft. Five VIP jets of Gulfstream and Dassault class. That is a national-asset-scale deployment, whichever explanation for their movements turns out to be correct.
The Army's ISR aircraft are not the expensive part of the Army's ISR programme. A Global 6500 airframe lists at $56–58 million; the HADES sensor and mission fit-out that turns it into an intelligence platform is a separate government cost that dwarfs it and is not in these figures.
Sources
- FAA Civil Aviation Registry, complete releasable aircraft database — https://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry
- Manufacturer and market list prices compiled from Bombardier, Gulfstream, Dassault, Textron Aviation, Pilatus, Bell, Boeing, Embraer and Beechcraft published pricing and the aviation trade price guides (AvBuyer, Controller, GlobalAir, Private Jet Card Comparisons, Aircraft Cost Calculator), current to 2026.
- The machine-readable version of this table lives in the repository as
aircraft_costs.csv.
Interesting In This Area
- TPUSA Aircraft — the organisation owns no registered aircraft at all.
- Charlie's & Erika's Aircraft — which tail belongs to whom.
- N1098L — the $58 million ISR jet that flew low over campus.
- SU-BTT — the $58 million Falcon that sat at Provo for six days.
:::caution Legal Disclaimer Nothing on this page constitutes a finding of wrongdoing by any registered aircraft owner, operator, or living person named here. Aircraft registration records are reproduced as public records and price figures are market estimates, not appraisals of any specific airframe. :::