AForeign Minister Annalena Baerbock failed on her second attempt to fly to Australia with the Air Force. “If you look at the monitors, you will also recognize the same flight behavior as yesterday. We’re just circling. Unfortunately, the same problem that we had yesterday happened to us again,” said the flight captain on Tuesday night, according to a dpa reporter on board the machine.
After taking off at 1:00 a.m. local time (11:00 p.m. CEST) in Abu Dhabi, the machine initially climbed, but did not pick up speed. 15 minutes after take-off, the Airbus A340-300 veered off course again and flew back towards the desert emirate. Baerbock was contrite in a first reaction: “Sometimes it’s really darn.”
The Green politician is on a week-long trip to Australia, New Zealand and Fiji. On Monday, your plane had to make a longer stopover in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates due to a defect in the Airbus landing flaps.
Again trouble with the flaps
“The flap enlargements, the wing enlargements can no longer be retracted. You have blocked yourself again (…). We spoke to Lufthansa test pilots. This error doesn’t exist like that,” said the captain. “For anyone who is anxious on the road, there is absolutely no reason to be alarmed. We have enough gas. When we have reached our landing weight again afterwards, like yesterday, then it will be a completely normal landing.” He has been doing this for a few years, said the captain, “but nothing like this has happened in the history of the readiness to fly”.
It is the second such breakdown within 24 hours. Early on Monday morning, three minutes after take-off at 3:33 a.m. local time (1:33 a.m. CEST), the flight captain noticed a defect in the retraction of the flaps. After the crew had drained around 80 tons of kerosene from the fully tanked plane in a two-hour maneuver over the desert emirate and the sea, it landed back in Abu Dhabi at 5:33 a.m. local time.
Since the landing flaps could not be retracted fully and synchronously as necessary, the aircraft could not reach normal cruising altitude and speed – kerosene consumption would have increased significantly on the long route to Australia. Since the aircraft was fully fueled for the almost 14-hour flight, the weight had to be greatly reduced for the landing.
After another mishap on the second attempt, the pilot gave a less than optimistic prognosis over the on-board microphone: “For us, the flight is over again today. Since we are absolutely in the dark at the moment as to which computer is to blame for the misery, there will probably not be another flight to Australia for us, not even tomorrow.” They are now trying to find out how the plane can get back to Germany at all .