Trump’s Air Force One makes emergency U-turn with President on board
Donald Trump’s Air Force One was plunged into darkness and forced to U-turn in mid-air en route to a crucial summit in Switzerland.
The president’s jet was heading to the World Economic Forum in Davos when it suffered an electrical fault.
The crew of the modified Boeing 747-200B made the call to abort the journey less than an hour into the flight and head back to the United States.
White House officials said the decision was made out of an ‘abundance of caution’ and stressed the electrical issue was minor.
The president soon hopped on another plane – an Air Force C-32 usually used for smaller domestic trips – back to the World Economic Forum.
Other members of the Trump administration were also on the plane, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, advisor Stephen Miller, Leavitt, Communications Director Stephen Chung and Chief of Protocol Monica Crowley.
The two planes currently used as Air Force One have been in service for nearly four decades.
One of the aircrafts underwent scheduled maintenance on January 9, but it’s unclear if it’s the one the president initially flew on.
The mishap sparked a joke from his Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, saying the jet gifted to him by Qatar sounding ‘much better’ right now.
Last year, the Gulf state’s ruling family gifted the US president a luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet to be added to the Air Force One fleet.
That plane is currently being modified to meet security requirements.
It’s not the first time an Air Force plane has failed problems.
Secretary Rubio was forced to return to Washington while en route to Germany last February.
Trump will now be three hours late to Davos, where he will showdown with European leaders after a crisis has erupted over Greenland.
Macron labelled the US president a ‘bully’ over his attempts to acquire the Danish territory.
When asked at the White House how far he was willing to go to get Greenland, he told reporters ‘you’ll find out’.
He also attacked Macron, saying: ‘They’ve got to straighten out their countries – you look at London, it’s having a lot of problems and if you look at Paris, got a lot of problems.’
Keir Starmer is not expected to attend the summit, despite Trump unleashing on the ‘stupid’ deal to hand over the Chagos islands to Mauritius.
Addressing rising tensions among European leaders – who Trump threatened with new tariffs last week, US Treasury Secretary told them today they should ‘sit down and wait for President Trump to get here’.
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