US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that a Boeing plane was grounded in Switzerland after it suffered a “significant failure” due to an oxygen leak.
A second plane was soon dispatched to bring him home, leaving behind him the globalist elite gathered at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, the BBC reported. report.
Some aides and visiting reporters returned to Washington, D.C., separately on commercial planes.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters the delay occurred at the end of Blinken's recent world tour and there was no disruption to his international itinerary.
“His plane had mechanical problems,” he said. “The Air Force is having a replacement plane arrive. It's still scheduled to return tonight, but it will be several hours later than originally scheduled.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken attends the World Economic Forum (WEF) event in Davos, Switzerland on January 17, 2024 (Hannes P Albert/picture Alliance via Getty Images)
The plane Blinken was flying was a modified Boeing C-40, a U.S. Air Force aircraft assigned to Joint Base Andrews, Air Force spokeswoman Rose Riley said. quoted by Axios said.
The Secretary of State and his aides first boarded the plane in Zurich on Wednesday, but were forced to disembark after the leak was discovered.
Prior to his departure, Blinken flew from Davos to Zurich by helicopter.
According to US media, he was scheduled to return to the US on a Boeing 737. report.
Mechanical problems with U.S. Air Force passenger planes have been a concern during previous visits to the State Department.
During Blinken's visit to China last summer, his aides issued reporters with Azerbaijani refueling visas in case the plane was grounded due to maintenance issues, the BBC reported. ing.
Wednesday's events are another blow to Boeing's name.
As Breitbart News reported, on January 5, an Alaska Airlines passenger plane was at an altitude of 16,000 feet when a door plug blew off shortly after takeoff, leaving a large hole in the side of the plane.
This National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) document shows an opening in the fuselage of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, a Boeing 737-9 MAX, photographed on January 7, 2024 in Portland, Oregon. Ten minutes after Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 took off from Portland, Oregon, en route to Ontario, California, on January 5, a door-sized section of the Boeing 737-9 MAX plane was blown off near the back. (NTSB via Getty Images)
The incident resulted in the temporary grounding of all 737 Max 9 jets.
The Associated Press previously reported that a Max 8 jet operated by Lion Air crashed in Indonesia in 2018, and an Ethiopian Airlines Max 8 crashed in 2019. Regulators around the world have grounded the plane for about two years as Boeing makes changes to the automatic flight control system involved in the crash.
In its financial report, Boeing estimated losses of more than $20 billion as a result of the two fatal crashes. The company has reached private settlements with most of the families of the passengers killed in the crash, the Associated Press reported.
