German minister cancels trip to Indo-Pacific nations after her plane breaks down

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock was forced on Tuesday to scrap her trip to Australia, New Zealand and Fiji after her plane suffered recurring technical problems, the latest in a series of incidents to hit the German fleet.

"We tried everything but unfortunately it's logistically not possible to carry out my Indo-Pacific travel (plans) without the defective plane," the minister wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

"That is more than annoying," she added.

Baerbock had left on Sunday for the week-long trip but her plane had suffered an outage after refuelling in Abu Dhabi.

The minister was stranded for hours while the technical crew battled to fix a problem with the wing flaps.

Her delegation sought to get underway again overnight to Tuesday but the 23-year-old Airbus A340 had to go back to Abu Dhabi when the defect resurfaced.

"For security reasons, the plane had to return there," wrote the German air force on X. The aircraft had to dump fuel to land safely in Abu Dhabi again, it added.

The mishap revived debate about the German government's ageing planes, with newspapers dubbing the latest incident "embarrassing" and a "fiasco".

- Merkel late for G20 -

Germany was "turning itself into a laughing stock", the RND media network wrote in an opinion piece.

It said the breakdown had caused political damage and hurt the "made in Germany" brand at a time when the economy was already struggling.

The incident led Germany's Luftwaffe air force to announce it had decided to retire the plane early, as well the government's other A340-300.

"We will take the two A340s out of service as soon as possible, i.e. in the coming weeks ahead of schedule," the Luftwaffe wrote on X.

The government purchased three new A350s for 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion) in 2019 to update the fleet and had planned to phase out the plane carrying Baerbock by the end of 2024.

"With the A350s, the air force has robust and modern aircraft at its disposal for long-haul operations," the Luftwaffe said.

German officials have repeatedly seen their flight plans disrupted in recent years because of technical problems.

The same A340-300 thwarting Baerbock's travel plans also delayed former chancellor Angela Merkel's trip to a G20 summit in 2018, that time due to an electronic fault.

Earlier that year, then finance minister and current chancellor Olaf Scholz had to take a commercial flight home from Indonesia after the same plane was grounded because rodents had chewed through some of its cables.

- 'Scrap the fleet' -

Baerbock had already suffered a travel setback in May, when she had to extend her visit to Qatar by a day after a different government plane developed a flat tyre.

The Australian foreign ministry said it shared "minister Baerbock's disappointment" over this week's aborted trip.

"We look forward to welcoming her to Australia in the future," a foreign ministry spokesperson said.

New Zealand's foreign ministry said it hoped "there will be an opportunity for the ministers to catch up in the future".

Baerbock was heading home on a commercial flight, according to reports.

"It's simply embarrassing that the foreign minister couldn't continue her trip," Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, the head of Germany's parliamentary defence committee, told German media.

The opposition far-left Die Linke party called for the government fleet to be scrapped altogether, saying doing so would be better for the climate and the federal budget.

"There are plenty of reliable airlines that the government can book," Linke member Gesine Loetzsch told Spiegel magazine.

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