German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has cancelled a trip to Australia, New Zealand and Fiji after her government plane was forced to make a second emergency landing in two days.
She was left stranded in Abu Dhabi after the 23-year-old Airbus A340-300 had repeated wing flap problems.
“This is beyond annoying,” the minister wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Germany may enjoy a reputation for efficiency, but its government planes are notoriously unreliable.
In 2018 the same Airbus plane had a technical fault which forced the then Chancellor Angela Merkel to miss the opening of a G20 summit in Argentina.
Earlier that year, Olaf Scholz – Germany’s finance minister at the time and now chancellor – was stranded in Indonesia after rodents chewed through cables on that plane.
Ms Baerbock was en route to the Indo-Pacific on Sunday when the wing flaps on her plane malfunctioned, forcing the pilots to make an emergency landing in the United Arab Emirates.
After repairs and a successful test flight, the aircraft took off again on Tuesday – only for the same problem to arise.
Credit: bbc.com
