‘We have tried everything’: Plane breakdown forces German foreign minister to cancel Australia trip
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London: Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has cancelled her trip to Australia because of a breakdown of her ageing plane in a major embarrassment for Europe’s biggest economy.
Baerbock, from Germany’s Greens Party, would have been the first foreign minister to visit Australia since 2011.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Annalena Baerbock in front of a German government plane.Credit: AP
Bearbock was due to meet Foreign Minister Penny Wong, attend the blockbuster Matildas vs Lionesses clash in Sydney, speak at the Lowy Institute and address the media.
Her trip had already been delayed on Monday due a technical fault with the German government plane that grounded Baerbock and her travelling entourage in Abu Dhabi.
But the German embassy in Australia insisted that the minister was en route and would arrive in Sydney on Tuesday evening.
But around that time Baerbock conceded defeat.
“We have tried everything: unfortunately it is logistically impossible to continue my Indo-Pacific trip without the defective plane,” she wrote on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter.
“This is more than annoying.
“There are few countries that are so geographically far away and at the same time so close to us as Australia and New Zealand.
“Although both countries are literally on the other side of the world from our perspective, freedom and democracy are part of our common DNA.”
She said she had wanted to deepen Germany and Australia’s collaborations on supporting Ukraine, dealing with China and reducing their trade dependencies during her visit.
“Embarrassing, embarrassing,” wrote German journalist Patrick Deikmann who was travelling with the minister.
He said the plane had unsuccessfully attempted to take off from Abu Dhabi three times before the trip was canned.
The Wall Street Journal’s Bojan Pancevski said the trip was designed to showcase Germany’s major policy shift in terms of containing China and engagement in the Indo-Pacific.
“It was planned for nearly a year,” he said.
“It was designed to demonstrate a new resolve. All of that foiled by a faulty plane.”
Berlin-based Thorsten Benner from the Global Public Policy Institute was also travelling with the minister.
“A trip perfectly orchestrated to signal German commitment to Indo-Pacific turned into the perfect metaphor to exploit for anyone peddling his or her favourite theory of decline,” he said.
“While lots of German doom & gloom interpretations sound pretty silly, the reputational damage both at home and abroad caused by the series of embarrassing mishaps in the government fleet is real.
“Corrosive damage requires simple & swift answer by government: committing to invest all the resources it takes to correct dysfunction in government fleet while finding time to make up for trips to Australia, New Zealand and Fiji as soon as possible.”
Baerbock was flying on an A340 more than 20 years old, taken over from Deutsche Lufthansa AG more than a decade ago and refurbished for VIP use.
It was the same aircraft that caused embarrassment for Germany in 2018 when former Chancellor Angela Merkel was forced back to Cologne, and delayed from arriving on time for the G20 in Buenos Aires.
In 2019, former defence minister and current EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen ordered a trio A350s following a spate of incidents like the one involving Merkel that left German government figures stranded and embarrassed.
The Germans have two A350s in service. It was not clear why she was assigned an older plane for the long-haul trip.
Germany’s Air Force, the Luftwaffe, said it would be immediately retiring the two A340s.
“The A350s provide the Air Force with robust and modern aircraft for long-haul operations,” it said.
“We will take the two A340s out of service as soon as possible, i.e. in the coming weeks ahead of schedule.
“The two Airbus A340s were originally scheduled to be retired in September 2023 and at the end of 2024.”
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