Green party politician Annalena Baerbock’s VIP airliner is broken, and after the second failed attempt to fly to Australia Germany’s top diplomat has called off the planned diplomatic tour of Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji.
“This is beyond annoying” wrote German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock in the early hours of Tuesday morning, after her German Air Force (Luftwaffe) provided Airbus A340-300 VIP jet broke down a second time, stranding the minister in Abu Dhabi yet again. The minister announced her week-long planned diplomatic visit to the Pacific which was to include talks on ‘green hydrogen’ and rising ocean levels had to be canceled as she was unable to travel without her government jet.
She is returning to Germany today by a regularly scheduled commercial flight from Dubai, having been stuck for around 24 hours.
Baerbock had originally departed Germany on the German government’s Air Force One-like ‘Konrad Adenauer’ jet on Sunday to fly to Australia with a refueling stop-off in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates. But on takeoff to complete the second leg of the journey the landing flaps malfunctioned, meaning the aircraft couldn’t achieve cruising altitude: citing safety first, the Luftwaffe sent the aircraft back to the UAE for repairs.
It was unclear how long this would take, with factors including the complexity of the failure, availability of parts, and even the German law-mandated minimum rest period for the pilots dictating when a second attempt to get to Australia for the planned tour could take place. As it was, after repairs and a successful test flight without the minister on Monday, Baerbock and her team re-embarked in the early hours of Tuesday morning and tried again.
Per a communication of the Luftwaffe, “the error occurred again with the now fully refueled machine”, meaning it was “mission aborted” and a third return to Abu Dhabi in two days for the Airbus A340-300 Konrad Adenauer.
Taking to social media, Baerbock herself seemed to vent her frustration, writing: “We have tried everything: unfortunately it is logistically impossible to continue my Indo-Pacific journey without the broken plane. This is beyond annoying.”
Her spokesman Sebastian Fischer, who was also on the plane, thanked the Luftwaffe for their “commitment” but also commented on how “very annoying” the failure was.
The Luftwaffe for their part appear to have signaled the degree to which the aircraft was beyond economical repair, announcing Tuesday morning that the planned retirement of the government’s two VIP-configured Airbuses was being brought forward to “as soon as possible, i.e. in the coming weeks”. The two four-engined jets are being replaced by three new Airbus A350s, which are twin-engine jets.
The trip was supposed to take in Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji. Among the engagements planned included an embassy opening, returning colonial-era artifacts to indigenous people in Australia, enjoying the women’s world cup, talking about ‘green hydrogen’, and learning about rising sea levels in Fiji.
Germany has longstanding issues with the serviceability of its military aircraft, which include the VIP-specification airliners for government travel. As previously reported:
Baerbock was stranded in Qatar earlier this year after her government jet broke down and former Chancellor Angela Merkel experienced a breakdown in 2018. Other government members including Usrula von der Leyen — then the Defence Minister and now a top Eurocrat — and Olaf Scholz have also suffered breakdowns.
As reported by Breitbart London, it isn’t just VIPs who suffer these issues. When Germany wanted to make a significant donation of military equipment to the Kurds fighting ISIS in 2014 including over 100 vehicles, thousands of battle rifles, machine guns, anti-tank rockets, tens of thousands of grenades, and millions of rounds of ammunition, they were considerably delayed because the aircraft meant to do the job broke down on the runway.
Worse still, when the Luftwaffe found they were unable to fix the aircraft, the backup plane they borrowed from another country to get them out of trouble broke down too.
This state of affairs hasn’t been without critics. Indeed, the parlous state of the German military was slammed by no less than the head of the Luftwaffe, Lieutenant General Karl Müllner, who experienced what was reported to have been a “not quite voluntary” removal from post over his criticism of Merkel’s leadership in 2018.
As reported, When Müllner ‘retired’ he was treated to a ceremonious flyby of four Eurofighter combat jets of the Luftwaffe over Berlin — then the only four combat-ready airframes out of Germany’s theoretical fleet of 128.