Japanese Air Force One

Each aircraft has a capacity of 140 passengers and can be used for emergency evacuations of Japanese citizens and overseas deployment of Japan Self-Defense Forces personnel.

German chancellor Gerhard Schröder joined Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi aboard the aircraft in 2002 in order to attend the 2002 FIFA World Cup finals in Yokohama, to which Germany advanced while Schröder was attending a G8 summit in Canada.

The operation, hastily improvised due to difficulties in flying the German government's Airbus A310 aircraft from Canada to Japan, was called "hitchhiking diplomacy" in the Japanese media.

[8] In January 2011, Prime Minister Naoto Kan was criticized for using the aircraft for a trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos while 500 Japanese nationals were stranded in the midst of civil unrest in Cairo.

Kan denied that such a discussion had taken place, and the Foreign Ministry stated that the aircraft was not used because of the difficulty of getting landing and transit permits from various governments on short notice.

[9] Kan later considered using the aircraft for a trip to Germany to watch the Japanese team play in the finals of the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup, but advisors dissuaded him from doing so due to the high cost and possibility of public outcry in the wake of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.

The aircraft contains an office area in the front-most section of the lower level, ordinarily for use by the prime minister, which may be repurposed for use by the Imperial family or other VIPs.

[13] The Gulfstream IV was only used as a prime ministerial aircraft once, by Yasuo Fukuda to travel from Beijing to Nagasaki at short notice when the 747 was unavailable.

Japan Airlines provided ground support services for the aircraft until December 2010, shortly prior to JAL's retirement of its 747 fleet.

[18] The Boeing 747-400 were taken out of service, stored at Sapporo for a period of time, then ferried to Marana for short-term storage under new registrations N7474C and N7477C.