A military aircraft transporting Secretary of State Marco Rubio to the Munich Security Conference in Germany was forced to return to Washington Thursday night after it encountered a “mechanical issue.”
“This evening, en route from Washington to Munich, the plane on which Secretary Rubio is flying experienced a mechanical issue,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement.
“The plane has turned around and is returning to Joint Base Andrews,” she added, referring to the Maryland air base just outside Washington, DC.
“The Secretary intends to continue his travel to Germany and the Middle East on a separate aircraft,” Bruce said.
The mechanical issue apparently had to do with the cockpit windshield on the Air Force’s Boeing C-32 plane and occurred about 90 minutes after take-off.
Axios reported that the windshield had a crack in it but didn’t pose “a safety concern,” citing a US official.
Flight tracking websites showed that Rubio’s plane abruptly turned around over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Maine, and maintained an altitude of about 10,000 feet as it headed back to Joint Base Andrews.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jim Risch (R-Idaho) was also aboard the aircraft.
It’s unclear if the plane change will delay the high-stakes Friday morning meeting Rubio is set to have in Munich with Vice President JD Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, during which discussions on how to end the nearly three-year war between Russia and Ukraine are expected to take place.
The mechanical issue follows a spate of recent crashes involving military aircraft.
An $81 million Air Force F-35 fighter jet crashed during a training exercise at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska late last month, and earlier this week, a Navy EA-18G Growler plummeted into California’s San Diego Harbor. The pilots of both planes were able to safely eject before the crashes.
On Jan. 29, a US Army helicopter flying along the Potomac River in Washington, DC, collided with an American Airlines jet landing at Reagan National Airport, killing 67 people.
