Presidential Flight

A white Boeing jet with an A6- registration that appears in no schedule but shows up on the tracker as “AUH” – that is the moment spotters prick up their ears. Behind such flights is usually the Presidential Flight, the state flight operation of the Abu Dhabi government. Its aircraft fly without ticket sales and without fixed routes. This page shows you where the organization comes from, which aircraft it flies today, what became of the 747-8 and A320 and how to attribute its jets reliably.

The Presidential Flight at a glance

The Presidential Flight is not an airline, even though databases list it next to Etihad Airways. It is the flight operation of the Abu Dhabi government and gets members of the ruling family, government delegations and state guests to their destination. There is no booking system; routes are flown as needed.

According to reference works, the roots go back to 1975. The flight operation was created then under the private office of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the founding president of the United Arab Emirates. Over the years it carried various names: first Royal Flight, later Amiri Flight or Abu Dhabi Amiri Flight. On February 16, 2009, it was renamed Presidential Flight.

For spotters, the name change matters. If you search photo databases for older pictures, you will still find many aircraft under “Abu Dhabi Amiri Flight” – and sometimes aircraft that are long gone from the inventory.

Codes, callsign and registrations

With a normal airline, you look at flight number, IATA code and registration. With the Presidential Flight, the picture is somewhat different:

• ICAO code AUH: It appears in the air traffic control flight plan and on flight trackers. Flights show up there with AUH and a short number, such as AUH04.
• Callsign “SULTAN”: this is how the crew identifies itself on the radio.
• IATA code MO: It is listed in reference works but plays practically no role for you as a spotter, because there are no sold flights with a flight number.
• Civil registrations: Unlike Germany’s Flugbereitschaft (the federal government air fleet) with its military markings, the Presidential Flight flies with civil UAE registrations, so with the prefix A6-.

The biggest pitfall is the code AUH. It is identical to the IATA code of Abu Dhabi Airport. A flight with the callsign AUH04 can therefore take off somewhere in Europe and land somewhere else entirely – the “AUH” says nothing about the departure point, only something about the operator.

The fleet: Boeing in VIP configuration

The Presidential Flight doesn’t publish an official fleet list. The following information draws on common fleet directories and photo databases. It gives you a good guide but can miss individual changes – as of October 2026, read it as a snapshot.

Type	Number (according to fleet lists)	Known registrations	Spotter note
Boeing 737-800 BBJ2	1	A6-AUH	Built in 2002, the smallest jet in the fleet
Boeing 777-200ER	1	A6-ALN	Long-haul for large delegations
Boeing 777-300ER	2	incl. A6-SIL	Largest type in the active fleet
Boeing 787-8	1	A6-PFC	The shorter of the two Dreamliner versions
Boeing 787-9	3	incl. A6-PFE, A6-PFG	A6-PFE dates from 2017

It is striking how consistently the fleet relies on Boeing. Since the A320 was retired, you find no Airbus in the active inventory in the common lists.

Boeing 737-800 BBJ2 – the medium-haul jet

A6-AUH is a business jet version of the Boeing 737-800, built in 2002. Boeing calls this version the BBJ2. From the outside it looks almost like a normal 737-800 but gives itself away by additional antennas on the fuselage spine and the VIP livery without an airline logo. The registration is a small gag for collectors: It is also the ICAO code of the operator.

Boeing 777 – the large delegations

For long routes and large delegations, a Boeing 777-200ER and two Boeing 777-300ERs are available. Known registrations are A6-ALN (777-200ER) and A6-SIL (777-300ER). You tell the two versions apart mainly by fuselage length and the raked wingtips of the 777-300ER; tips are in the article Telling the Boeing 777 and 787 apart.

Boeing 787 – the Dreamliner fleet

The registrations with A6-PF… belong to the Dreamliner part of the fleet. A6-PFC is a Boeing 787-8, A6-PFE a Boeing 787-9 from 2017. Added to these are the 787-9 A6-PFG and A6-PFH, another Dreamliner whose exact version is not clearly stated in public sources. Not every one of these aircraft necessarily has a pure VIP cabin – observers suspect that some Dreamliners carry support staff or baggage. That isn’t proven, but it would explain why several jets often show up in quick succession on big trips.

Retired: the 747-8, A320 and the older jumbos

Many spotters still associate the Presidential Flight with a jumbo – and with the Airbus A320, which was regularly seen in Europe for years. Both are now history:

• Boeing 747-8: The VIP 747-8 with the registration A6-PFA was the flagship of the fleet. Fleet lists now show it as retired, with October 2017 given as the date.
• Airbus A320: A6-DLM, built in 2005, was the only Airbus of the more recent fleet and a regular guest in Geneva, among other places. According to fleet lists, its service ended in 2023.
• Boeing 747-400 and 747-400M: Two fourth-generation jumbos flew until 2015.
• Boeing 747SP: The shortened long-range 747 left the fleet as early as 2007.
• Other former types: Boeing 767-300 and 737-700 BBJ (both until 2010) and the regional jets Avro RJ70 and RJ100 (until 2015 and 2016, respectively).

Important for your archive: If you have photos of these aircraft, file them under the operator name that applied at the time of the shot. Before February 2009, that was Abu Dhabi Amiri Flight. How to tell the 747 generations apart is explained in the article Recognizing the Boeing 747-100 to 747-8.

How to recognize the Presidential Flight

There is no uniform house livery like at Etihad. The jets are mostly kept white, carry no airline logo and differ in detail from aircraft to aircraft. That is why the safest route goes through data, not colors.

One detail helps in telling it apart from other Gulf VIP fleets: Qatar Amiri Flight and the Royal Flight of Oman also use large Boeing and Airbus jets in VIP configuration. An A7- on the tail leads you to Qatar, an A4O- to Oman, an A6- to the Emirates. Within the Emirates there are also other state and VIP operators, such as the Dubai government’s flight operation or the charter company Royal Jet from Abu Dhabi. So the prefix alone isn’t enough – only the ICAO code makes the attribution certain.

Spotting the Presidential Flight: where and when

The fleet’s home is Abu Dhabi Zayed International Airport. There the Presidential Flight sits on its own apron, separate from the scheduled service of Etihad or Air Arabia Abu Dhabi. If you connect in Abu Dhabi, you sometimes see one of the white Boeing jets from the terminal – but you should only take photos where it is clearly allowed.

Sightings outside the Emirates are more realistic. The jets show up on state visits, at international summits and conferences, but also on private trips. In Europe, Geneva has been considered a good place for VIP jets from the Gulf region for years; A6-AUH, the former A320 A6-DLM and the 787-9 A6-PFE have all been photographed there. There is no fixed rhythm, however. Where you are best placed there is shown in the guide Plane spotting in Geneva.

How to plan for government aircraft in general and which strategy has proven itself is described in the article Spotting government aircraft. For the legal side in Germany, take a look at Is plane spotting allowed?, and for the small jets on the VIP apron at Spotting business jets.

Common mix-ups

• Reading AUH as the departure point – in the callsign, AUH stands for the operator, not for Abu Dhabi airport.
• Attributing every white A6- jet to the Presidential Flight – there are other state and VIP operators in the Emirates. Only the ICAO code confirms the attribution.
• Still expecting the 747-8 – A6-PFA is listed as retired in fleet lists.
• Logging the A320 A6-DLM as current – it has not been in the active inventory since 2023.
• Mixing up Etihad VIP flights – if an Etihad aircraft flies with state guests, it stays an Etihad flight with an ETD callsign.
• Captioning old photos wrongly – before February 16, 2009, the operator was called Abu Dhabi Amiri Flight.

Conclusion

The Presidential Flight is one of the most exciting VIP fleets in the Gulf – small, hard to plan for and therefore a real collecting goal. If you have the ICAO code AUH, the callsign SULTAN and the known A6- registrations in your head, you attribute the jets reliably. The big names of the past, the 747-8 and A320, are history. Today the organization flies almost exclusively Boeing: 737 BBJ2, 777 and 787.