German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has cancelled a trip to Australia, New Zealand and Fiji after her government plane was forced to make a second emergency landing in two days.
In 2018 the same Airbus plane had a technical fault which forced the then Chancellor Angela Merkel to miss the opening of a G20 summit in Argentina.
Earlier that year, Olaf Scholz - Germany’s finance minister at the time and now chancellor - was stranded in Indonesia after rodents chewed through cables on that plane.
Ms Baerbock was en route to the Indo-Pacific on Sunday when the wing flaps on her plane malfunctioned, forcing the pilots to make an emergency landing in the United Arab Emirates.
“We have tried everything: unfortunately it is logistically impossible to continue my Indo-Pacific journey without the defective plane,” Ms Baerbock wrote on X.
Owing to the mishap, Germany’s Luftwaffe Air Force announced that it would retire the plane early.