The might of the German industrial machine can solve the most befuddling of tasks. Alas, fixing the foreign minister’s plane does not appear to be among them. Annalena Baerbock was forced to abandon an important trip to Australia after being let down twice by her ageing government Airbus. The minister was stranded in Abu Dhabi on Monday night after the plane’s wing flaps failed to retract. After being reassured by the German air force that they had things in hand, she declined to take a commercial flight on. But come Tuesday, the Green MP’s plane was forced to dump thousands of gallons of fuel to make an emergency landing for the second time. “The Bundeswehr Air Readiness Unit is doing an excellent job” and the two A340 aircraft used by ministers are “excellently maintained”, a defensive spokesman for the federal government in Berlin said.
Photograph Alamy