Qatar’s Amiri Flight sought to distinguish itself from Gulf rivals by sending two widebody head-of-state aircraft instead of one to the coronation of King Charles III, which took place at Westminster Abbey in London on Saturday.
A video by RVA Aviation posted on YouTube on Friday showed a procession of government aircraft landing at London Stansted Airport in preparation for the festivities, including more modest aircraft bearing the delegations of the Emirati, Kuwaiti, Kazakh, Thai, Ghanaian, and other heads of state.
Qatar may have decided that the size of its delegation was too large for a single aircraft—or realized the inadvisability of having different Amiri wives on the same aircraft. In the event, both an Airbus A340-300 and a Boeing BBJ 747-8 ferried the Qatari delegation to the UK.
According to aviation database PlaneSpotters, Amiri Flight has three A340 variants all at least 19 years old, while no information was available on the B747-8, of which AIN understands Amiri Flight also has three.
Speaking at Corporate Jet Investor Dubai 2023 on Wednesday, Boeing BBJ director of marketing Alex Fecteau noted that there are 44 head-of-state widebody aircraft in the Middle East, putting the concentration of these aircraft far ahead of other parts of the world. Some 32 are Boeing aircraft, with the other 12 constructed by other aircraft manufacturers.