U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was grounded in Switzerland on Wednesday after his Boeing plane had a “critical failure” due to an oxygen leak.
A second plane was quickly despatched to whisk him back home, thus leaving the globalist elites gathered at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos in his wake, the BBC reports.
Some aides and traveling press party returned to Washington, DC, separately by commercial flight.
The delay occurred at the end of Blinken’s latest global trip and did not disrupt his overseas itinerary, Matthew Miller, a state department spokesperson told reporters.
“There was a mechanical issue with his plane,” he said. “The Air Force has a replacement plane inbound. We expect to be back still tonight but several hours later than originally planned.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken at an event of the World Economic Forum (WEF) on 17 January 2024, in Davos, Switzerland.(Hannes P Albert/picture alliance via Getty Images)
The plane Blinken was flying on was a modified Boeing C-40, a U.S. Air Force aircraft assigned to Joint Base Andrews, Rose Riley, a spokesperson for the Air Force cited by Axios said.
The secretary of state and aides initially boarded the plane in Zurich on Wednesday and were forced to get off after the leak was identified.
Blinken had taken a helicopter from Davos to Zurich ahead of his departure.
He had been scheduled to return to the U.S. aboard a Boeing 737, according to U.S. media reports.
Mechanical issues on U.S. Air Force passenger planes have been a concern on previous state department trips.
On Blinken’s trip to China last summer, his aides provided reporters with visas for an Azerbaijan refuelling stop just in case any maintenance issues should ground the aircraft, the BBC report sets out.
Wednesday’s events come as another blow to Boeing’s name.
On Jan. 5 an Alaska Airlines jet had a door plug blow out shortly after takeoff when the plane was at 16,000 feet, leaving a gaping hole in the side of the jet, as Breitbart News reported.
In this National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) handout, an opening is seen in the fuselage of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 Boeing 737-9 MAX on January 7, 2024 in Portland, Oregon. A door-sized section near the rear of the Boeing 737-9 MAX plane blew off 10 minutes after Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 took off from Portland, Oregon on January 5 on its way to Ontario, California. (NTSB via Getty Images)
The incident led to the temporary grounding of all 737 Max 9 jets.
Previously a Max 8 jet operated by Lion Air crashed in Indonesia in 2018, and an Ethiopian Airlines Max 8 crashed in 2019, AP reports. Regulators around the world grounded the planes for nearly two years while Boeing changed an automated flight control system implicated in the crashes.
Boeing has estimated in financial reports that fallout from the two fatal crashes has cost it more than $20 billion. It has reached confidential settlements with most of the families of passengers who died in the crashes, the AP report details.