The canceled visit is just the latest in a string of official trips to be affected by problems with government planes.

    • ach@feddit.de
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      11 months ago

      A350-900

      ACJ350-900 (or ACJ350 XWB)

      In 2020 only the first one was delivered. In March, 2023, the third one.

      • elmicha@feddit.de
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        11 months ago

        And now they are still decorating the new machines or why are they still not used?

        • zaphod@feddit.de
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          11 months ago

          From what I read the chancellor always has two planes on standby and those are the new ones.

    • AngrilyEatingMuffins@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      is ten years old really that long of a service life for a plane? i looked it up and the average lifespan of a service plane is 20-30 years

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    11 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    The 23-year-old Airbus A340 aircraft, named the “Konrad Adenauer” after the first chancellor of West Germany, landed in Abu Dhabi to refuel on Monday but returned shortly after takeoff because of a malfunction with the wing flaps.

    Then-Chancellor Angela Merkel and her finance minister, now chancellor, Olaf Scholz, were traveling on the Adenauer to the Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires in 2018 when they had to make an emergency landing at Cologne Bonn Airport in Germany.

    Scholz was stranded in Indonesia after rodents gnawed through electric cables of the Adenauer, and a burst tire on arrival in New York delayed then-Foreign Minister Heiko Maas’s attending a U.N. Security Council meeting in 2019.

    The aviation industry consultant Heinrich Grossbongardt said some of the reported problems with government aircraft in recent years would have been tolerated on commercial flights.

    “Absences or late arrivals damage the national interest and the reputation of the Federal Republic of Germany,” the Defense Ministry said at the time to justify the purchase.

    During the planned trip to Australia, New Zealand and Fiji, Baerbock had, among her aims, intended to discuss economic security and Russia’s war in Ukraine.


    I’m a bot and I’m open source!