Fate has a good sense of humor, although I doubt Annalena Baerbock found it funny when her latest journey was cut short by unfortunate happenstance, indirectly reminding the whole country of the government’s environmental hypocrisy.
Germany’s Green foreign minister was on her way to complete a diplomatic roundtrip in Oceania when a mechanical failure left her stranded in Abu Dhabi, but not before having to dump over a hundred tons of jet fuel into the atmosphere to make the safe landing, Politico reported on Tuesday, August 14th.
Baerbock began her trip to Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji on Sunday evening, stopped for an overnight rest and refueling in the UAE, and took off toward Australia on Monday morning.
The government’s private plane was barely in the air for a few hours when her crew detected a mechanical malfunction. Due to a broken pressure switch, one of the landing flaps could not be retracted, increasing drag and fuel consumption, which meant the plane would run out of gas before reaching its destination.
The crew had no choice but to land in Abu Dhabi again, hoping to finish repairs by midday. For safety reasons, however, they had to dump 80 tons of kerosene before attempting the landing. Baerbock spent the day postponing some of the planned meetings and having others over video calls, while the pilots ran test flights around the city.
At last, good news came when the pilots reported that everything was in order, and they could resume the trip. The plane took off for Australia for the second time on Monday evening, only to encounter the same problem, turn back after a few hours, and land in Abu Dhabi once more shortly after midnight.
Of course, the fully refueled plane was unsafe to land again, so—just as in the first attempt—the crew let go of another 80 tons of kerosene, putting the total amount at 160 tons of jet fuel sprayed over the Arabian Peninsula.
Acknowledging the defeat, Baerbock was driven across the desert on Tuesday morning from Abu Dhabi to Dubai and put on the next Emirates flight bound for Berlin. By evening, the foreign minister safely completed the unscheduled roundtrip, arriving in the German capital from where she started off two days prior. She had nothing to show for it, save for frustration and embarrassment.
According to the German press, it wasn’t the first time Airbus 340, named Konrad Adenauer, had acted funny in the last few years. In May this year, for instance, Baerbock was stranded in Qatar after the plane suffered tire damage on the runway.
In 2018, the same plane nearly caused a collective heart attack among the ranks of the German security services when all communication systems failed simultaneously with then-Chancellor Angela Merkel and Vice-Chancellor Olaf Scholz on board, halfway across the Atlantic.
As far as Bild knows, Baerbocks’ latest blunder was the last straw, and the Adenauer will be finally retired after 24 years of service.
Of course, the fact that the German government seems to have sustained problems with the maintenance of its planes is only a minor issue in the story. What really fueled the German social media outrage was the environmental cost of the blunder, especially given that the Green foreign minister was heading to Oceania to talk about, among others, sustainability and environmentalism.
“What does Ms. Baerbock think about such actions?” one angry user wrote. “As a Green, you shouldn’t necessarily fly from Berlin to the Fiji Islands to hold an appointment that can be done in five minutes via Skype.”
To be fair, Skype might be more environmentally friendly but personal meetings have important symbolic value in diplomacy, and shaking the hand of the other side is sometimes half the job. But if you’re going to that—and especially if you want to present as a friend of the planet—at least make sure you’ll arrive and won’t have to spray half a continent with jet fuel on the way there.
