German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s flight to Poland for World War II commemorations has been delayed after the government aircraft he'd intended to board experienced technical difficulties, the German news outlet N-TV reports.
Steinmeier had to change from an Airbus A321 to a smaller A319 aircraft in Berlin due to a faulty display for the de-icing system of the A321, a Luftwaffe (German Air Force) spokesman was quoted by local media as saying. The spokesperson added that the A319 plane had safely landed at a Polish airport.
The replacement became the latest in a series of similar incidents that have dogged German government planes in the past.
Last month, a technical problem on the A321 prompted Foreign Minister Heiko Maas to use an A-319 plane to fly to New York from Berlin's Tegel Airport; in a February incident, his aircraft was stuck in the land-locked African nation of Mali due to similar problems.
In a separate incident pertaining to Maas’ plane, one of his Airbus A321’s tyres exploded upon landing at a New York airport in April despite the fact that it had recently been replaced with a new tyre. .
In January, President Steinmeier was stranded in Ethiopia after a “compressed air problem” was found on a government plane.
Incident With Merkel Plane
This followed an incident in late November 2018, when Chancellor Angela Merkel's plane, an Airbus А340 dubbed the “Konrad Adenauer”, lost all communications with the ground as it was flying over Netherlands towards the G20 summit in Argentina, and was forced to return to Cologne.
The pilots managed to safely land the plane with half-full fuel tanks, which created additional security risks, as the fuel system on board also failed. Merkel, in turn, was forced to take a commercial flight to arrive in Buenos Aires.
All this comes amid the backdrop of a series of mishaps that have plagued the Bundeswehr over the past few years. In 2018, German media cited sources in the country’s Defence Ministry as saying that only 39 percent of heavy military equipment delivered to the German armed forces last year was fit to be immediately put into service.
The Ministry specifically expressed concerns over the country's Airbus A400M transport aircraft, armoured Puma infantry fighting vehicle and Leopard 2 tank.