First he boarded Air Force One in front of the cameras, waving from the door as in a normal presidential departure. A few minutes later, however, Donald Trump would exit the other side of the plane hidden inside an airport catering truck, to reach a second military aircraft and leave Turkey without almost anyone knowing where he really was.
It is the outstanding security operation reconstructed by the Washington Post more than a month after the events. It all happened on the evening of 8 July 2026, after the NATO summit in Ankara, in the presence of what US sources cited by the newspaper define as a credible threat against the president’s life linked to Iran. The White House has not denied the story, but has not publicly confirmed all the details either.
Trump had arrived in Türkiye aboard the new Boeing 747-8 donated by Qatar to the United States and adapted for presidential transport. Before leaving Ankara, however, he had announced that, for the first part of the return journey, he would use the old blue and white 747, the one traditionally associated with Air Force One. The public explanation was that the new aircraft would first fly to the British base at RAF Mildenhall, so that it could be demonstrated to American servicemen stationed in the United Kingdom.
At sunset Trump then reaches the old 747 with the presidential motorcade, climbs up the external ladder and greets the cameras. Everything seems to proceed normally. But on the opposite side of the aircraft, out of the main view of journalists and photographers, one of the vehicles used at airports to load food and drinks onto planes was positioned. More than a normal “van”, it is a catering truck equipped with a body that can be hydraulically raised to the height of the doors. The photographs taken that evening actually show these vehicles alongside the 747.
Trump gets on Air Force One, but it’s a decoy
According to the Washington PostTrump and some collaborators would have entered the bed of the truck. The container would have been lowered, the vehicle would have moved away from the 747 to reach a US Air Force C-32A – a military version of the Boeing 757-200, used for the transfer of vice presidents, members of the government and other prominent personalities – parked nearby and would have been raised again to the height of the door of the second plane. The newspaper claims to have reconstructed the sequence through images, videos, material viewed directly and testimonies from people familiar with the operation.
The aircraft with Trump landed at the RAF Mildenhall base around 10.20pm, a few minutes before the old 747 on which the press and part of the staff were travelling. It was not publicly clarified how the president then returned to the 747 without being seen: at 10.56 pm Trump was photographed while he was going down the steps of the old plane, thus giving the outside impression of having arrived on board that one. Shortly thereafter he boarded the new 747 from Qatar to continue to Washington.
According to the Washington Posta specific Iran-related threat against Trump or the presidential plane would have triggered the entire plan. The operation took place in a phase of very strong tension between Washington and Tehran and the previous evening the United States had once again conducted attacks against Iran. Already in the weeks following the trip, other American media had reported that intelligence had signaled the risk of a possible attack against the president or his aircraft.