German magazine Der Spiegel reported citing a confidential report that in 2010, Lufthansa upgraded Airbus А340's built-in digital communications system without informing the pilots and the aeronautics company Airbus about it.
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The publication added that it prevented the crew of Merkel's plane from appropriately addressing the malfunction while the plane was in the air. The plane had to make an emergency landing to get the communications systems failure fixed, according to the magazine.
In late November, the German government's "Konrad Adenauer" jet – a modified Airbus A340 – was forced to land in Cologne after a communications systems failure.