German Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck has reportedly been left stranded at a tech event in Lisbon after the German Government’s jet broke down.
The Airbus 350-900 — named Kurt Schumacher after the famed anti-Nazi resistance fighter — blew a fuse in one of its engines while still on the ground, with the fault being judged serious enough to prevent take-off on November 12.
The failure of the five-month-old aircraft meant that Habeck would not be able to travel until the evening of November 13.
According to a report by Bild, he will miss the beginning of Germany’s campaign season, with the Bundestag soon to be dissolved to allow snap elections in February next year.
Another cause for concern was the state of the jet. The new A350 was one of three new long-range aircraft bought by the German Bundeswehr to replace its rapidly ageing fleet of private planes.
One of these aircraft, an A340 named the Konrad Adenauer, became infamous in the country for stranding Green foreign minister Annalena Baerbock multiple times in foreign locations.
The ageing jet “went tech” — a slang term within the aviation sector for when aircraft experience serious technical issues — multiple times during several foreign trips, even forcing the left-wing politician to abandon one tour abroad entirely.
It reportedly experienced serious technical failures twice over the skies of Abu Dhabi in 2023, with the aircraft carrying Baerbock at one point being forced to dump gallons of polluting jet fuel over the desert to land safely.
Germany should not hold its snap elections too early due to, among other things, “the increasingly difficult procurement of paper” for election ballots, according to Ruth Brand, head of the Federal Election Commission. https://t.co/0YXElof0g9
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) November 13, 2024
