In the night to Australia
Baerbock’s Airbus can still fly on
08/14/2023, 8:14 p.m
Government planes often fail to reach their destination because of breakdowns. Once again, a technical defect in an Airbus means that Foreign Minister Baerbock cannot begin her journey from Abu Dhabi to Australia in the morning. But now the redeeming “Ok” is still there.
Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock can probably start her week-long trip through Australia, New Zealand and Fiji, albeit with a delay. Previously, Baerbock was slowed down by a technical defect in an Airbus. “We are pleased that we can continue the interrupted trip to Australia tonight,” said ntv chief reporter Christian Wilp to the delegation in the early evening. The landing is therefore planned in Sydney, the travel program will be adjusted accordingly. Since the replacement system works, the breakdown pilot can now start after all.
Wilp had been in the A340-300 machine that morning, in which Baerbock wanted to leave the runway in Abu Dhabi with her delegation and other journalists. Even before takeoff, the routine refueling of the Air Force Airbus took longer than planned. When the plane took off, the seat belt signs stayed on for an unusually long time. The flight monitors showed the plane flying in circles.
The captain of the A340 introduced his bad news on the on-board radio, reports Wilp, that he had “not so good news”. The announcement brought clarity: The Green politician has again become the victim of a breakdown in a government aircraft.
“Nothing works anymore”
According to Wilp, the mood on board fluctuated between incredulity and fatalism. “Not again,” everyone would have thought. After all, every journalist has already had one or the other breakdown with the flight readiness: “How embarrassing. ‘Made in Germany’ completely on the ground. Nothing works anymore.”
Three minutes after take-off at 3:33 a.m. local time (1:33 a.m. CEST), the flight captain noticed that the flaps were being retracted. After the crew had drained around 80 tons of kerosene from the fully tanked machine in a two-hour maneuver over the desert emirate and the sea, Baerbock landed back in Abu Dhabi at 5:33 a.m. local time.
The failure of the flaps to fully and synchronously retract as necessary prevented the aircraft from reaching normal cruising altitude and speed. In addition, kerosene consumption increased. The aircraft was fully fueled for the almost 14-hour flight and took off from Abu Dhabi with a maximum take-off weight of 271 tons. For landing, it had to weigh less than 190 tons.
Merkel and Scholz also used breakdown planes
After landing, the airport fire brigade accompanied the Airbus. The flight captain spoke of a normal landing, which is regularly practiced for such a situation in the simulator. He did not request the escort of the fire brigade. The captain also said he has been a pilot for 35 years and has been with the Air Mission for 30 years. Such an error had not occurred in the whole time. Accordingly, one of the two rear landing flaps was defective.
Wilp himself was only stuck with the willingness to fly a year ago. At that time, the ntv chief reporter was traveling with Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner and had to take a forced break in the US capital Washington. A replacement machine was only available a day late.
It was similar with the former Chancellor Angela Merkel and the then Finance Minister Olaf Scholz with a plane named “Konrad Adenauer” on the way to the G20 summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina: In November 2018, the government plane only made it to Cologne/Bonn because the electronics failed. The German government duo then flew on to Argentina. Curious: It was the same plane that also dropped Baerbock in Abu Dhabi, as Wilp explains. Because more modern government aircraft of the type “A350 were not available due to other orders”, like the Air Force on Twitter communicates.
In 2018 rodents nibbled on “Konrad Adenauer”.
Baerbock’s flight to Australia was originally planned with the sister aircraft of the former “Konrad Adenauer”, an almost identical A340-300. However, this one was also broken. A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Defense said in Berlin that the end of use of the A340-300 aircraft in question is scheduled for the end of September.
There were other mishaps with government aircraft. In October 2018, rodents nibbled important cables of the “Konrad Adenauer” during a stop in Indonesia. At that time, Scholz returned as finance minister by scheduled flight from the meeting of the International Monetary Fund. In December 2016, then Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen got stranded on her way to Mali. Because of a computer problem with her A340 in the Nigerian capital Abuja, she had to stay there overnight.
In a good year and a half as Foreign Minister, Baerbock has already had experience with the breakdown-prone aircraft of the air force. The Foreign Minister was stranded in mid-May with a punctured tire on her plane in Doha in the desert emirate of Qatar and had to involuntarily extend her trip to the Gulf region because the replacement plane also gave out.
Planned return of cultural property in Australia
The deputy government spokesman Wolfgang Büchner said in Berlin when asked about the operational readiness of the flight readiness: “The flight readiness of the Bundeswehr is doing an excellent job”, the aircraft would be “excellently maintained”.
Baerbock himself initially did not want to comment publicly on the incident. She originally wanted to land in the Australian capital Canberra around 10:30 p.m. local time (2:25 p.m. CEST) on Monday evening. On Tuesday morning local time, the program was scheduled to begin with the return of colonial-era cultural objects to the Kaurna Indigenous people of Australia.
The objects in the Grassi Museum in Leipzig – a wooden sword, a spear, a fishing net and a club – have sacred, cultural and identity-forming value for the Kaurna people. The delegation said it was not about looted property, but about objects that had been handed over to German missionaries by the Kaurna at the time.