Chinese President Xi Jinping’s official state aircraft is a modified Boeing 747-8 operated by Air China. The modified Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental serves as China’s premier state transport and mobile command centre.
The aircraft is heavily modified with satellite-based, military-grade encrypted communication systems that allow President Xi to maintain constant contact with government and military command centres anywhere on Earth. Only the Chinese president and the State Council premier are permitted to use the presidential aircraft for international visits. Other state leaders rely on chartered planes for their trips. Before any presidential flight, the aircraft’s interior was temporarily refitted with sofas and beds.
Before this official presidential aircraft, China’s president used to travel on commercial Boeing 747-400s. Those planes had to be temporarily refitted with VVIP cabins by the Chinese Air Force approximately 20 days before a diplomatic mission and were converted back to standard passenger seating for public routes afterwards. In 2015, when Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife, Peng Liyuan, flew to the US, they travelled on a commercial aircraft.
“There is no ‘special plane’ for Chinese leaders — the planes are provided by Air China,” Lu Peixin, former acting director of the protocol department of China’s Foreign Ministry, was quoted as saying in a China Daily report. A month was also spent carrying out security checks and carefully selecting the flight crew, Lu said. China did not confirm or deny the incident at the time, but a Foreign Ministry spokesman said at a press briefing a few months later that it was “completely unnecessary to eavesdrop on China”.
