German foreign minister cancels Australia trip after plane ‘debacle’

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German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock has been forced to abandon a trip to Australia after being let down for a second time by an ageing government plane.

In a saga that has been branded a national embarrassment, the Green politician was forced to cancel the trip after the German air force failed to fix a problem with the wing flaps of a 23-year-old Airbus. 

Writing on the social media platform X, Baerbock said it had become “logistically impossible” to continue the week-long visit, which was also expected to include stops in New Zealand and Fiji.

“This is more than annoying,” she wrote.

Baerbock and her delegation were stranded in Abu Dhabi on Monday after the plane was forced to abort its trip three minutes after take-off because of the wing flaps failing to retract.

The minister turned down the option to travel on a commercial airline after being reassured by the German air force that, after a test flight, the problems had been resolved.

They made a fresh attempt to depart in the early hours of Tuesday morning. But the pilot was once again forced to abort the journey minutes after taking off when encountering the same problem. For the second day running, the plane had to dump thousands of gallons of fuel in order to land safely back in Abu Dhabi.

Baerbock’s team worked through the night to try and find alternatives, but concluded it would be impossible to make the packed programme work on commercial flights. 

Her cancelled trip would have been the first visit to Australia by a German foreign minister since 2011 and she had described it as an important opportunity to “strengthen the bond of co-operation” between the two nations. Baerbock had also planned to attend one of the Women’s World Cup semi-finals.

After the second failed take-off, the German air force announced it would accelerate the retirement of two A340s used by ministers, which were to be taken out of service at the end of September.

German officials on Monday defended the service provided by the diplomatic fleet and the team from the Bundeswehr — the German armed forces — that maintains it, despite a long history of technical problems that have afflicted multiple official trips.

“The Bundeswehr Air Readiness Unit is doing an excellent job,” said a spokesman for the federal government in Berlin, adding that the aircraft were also “excellently maintained”.

Asked why Baerbock could not have used one of three new A350-900 aircraft purchased by the government at a cost of €1.2bn — two of which are in service — the defence ministry said the older plane had been chosen based on an assessment of availability and the needs of other users.

It was unclear whether the planes had been earmarked for other officials, with the development minister this week visiting Mauritania and Nigeria, and chancellor Olaf Scholz scheduled to visit Austria. 

The episode triggered a bout of hand-wringing in the German media, with commentators drawing comparisons between the “embarrassing” breakdown and the country’s sluggish economic growth, burdensome bureaucracy and late-running trains.

The tabloid Bild described it as a “debacle” and news magazine Der Spiegel said the idea of a government plane that can’t fly “fits with everything you’ve been hearing about the country lately”. 

Travelling with Baerbock was Thorsten Benner, director of Global Public Policy Institute, a Berlin-based think thank. He said that “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 German decline”.

“The reputational damage both at home and abroad caused by the series of embarrassing mishaps in the government fleet is real,” Benner said.