Federal Foreign Minister Heiko Maas is stranded because of a breakdown on his government aircraft in West African Mali. The aircraft of the type A319 could not bring him on Thursday evening as planned from the Malian capital Bamako back to Berlin.
A spokesman for the Luftwaffe told the German Press Agency that a hydraulic leak of a size on the machine had been detected that was „outside the tolerance limit“.
A larger replacement aircraft of the type A340 will start on Friday morning at Cologne / Bonn airport to pick up Maas and his delegation. The Minister is expected to fly back to Berlin with a delay of almost 20 hours on Friday afternoon.
The SPD politician took it easy. „I have now flown more than 300,000 kilometers without a breakdown,“ he said. At some point it will catch everyone. The Foreign Minister has been traveling in West Africa since Sunday. Mali is the last stop of his journey.
In recent months, it has repeatedly come to glitches during the flight readiness. Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) was therefore late for the G20 summit in Buenos Aires. Development Minister Gerd Müller (CSU) remained in Africa for a long time, even had to cancel a visit to Namibia. Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier had to wait for hours in South Africa in November because of an engine failure. And in October, rodents in Indonesia had paralyzed the machine of Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (SPD).
