Saudi Prince Once Owned A $300M Airbus A380 Jet Converted Into Flying Palace
On Tuesday, February Brent crude went down again to $45.19 a barrel, the lowest since March 2009, just a day after Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal said it would never again return to $100 which was an artificial price.
But even if the price of crude oil in the international market has plummeted by more than 60 percent, the royals of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will remain rich from the petrodollars they have earned over the decades.
That affords them the luxuries that only the uber wealthy could afford such as the $300 million Airbus A380 jet that Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal bought in 2012 from Airbus and refurbished at the cost of $200 million which made the jet a flying palace.
The Airbus A380 is the same plane used by Singapore Airlines and Emirates, which could seat 800 passengers and fly 8,000 miles before refueling, reports Daily Mail.
The cost is after all just a drop in the bucket for the Middle Eastern royal whose net worth, according to Daily Mail, is more than $18 billion, on top of investments in profitable global firms such as News Corp, Apple, Citigroup and Twitter.
It was delivered green or just a basic shell and the prince hired Design Q for its interiors.
YouTube/Luxs Report
The jet has a parking space for his Rolls Royce, a concert hall that could seat 10 people and with a grand piano, five master's bedroom with king-sized beds and private bathrooms and showers and 20 smaller private rooms.
There's a spiral main staircase as well as a private lift connecting Alwaleed's master's bedroom to the tarmac for easy entrance and exit, holographic monitors in the boardrooms and computer-monitored prayer mats in the prayer room that adjust automatically to face Mecca.
Other amenities include a Turkish bath and a well-being room with flat screen TVs on the wall and a giant screen on the floor to see the plane's location.
While the prince eventually sold the luxury plane when shareprices of Citi dipped, Alawaleed still owns a configured Boeing B747, Airbus A321, several yachts and more than 100 vehicles.
On Monday, he topped the 100 Most Influential Personality List in Saudi Arabia.
To contact the writer, email: v.hernandez@ibtimes.com.au