Secretary of State Antony Blinken experienced a delay in returning home from Switzerland as planned Wednesday due to a malfunction with his plane, a modified Boeing 737 business jet.
Blinken was in Davos to attend the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting this week. After leaving Davos for Zurich on helicopters and boarding his aircraft, Blinken and his team were informed that the Boeing 737 business jet, modified to transport political figures and operated by the U.S. military, was unsafe to fly. Crew were unable to remediate a previously detected oxygen leak.
POLITICO confirmed the delay, first reported by Bloomberg News.
The modified Boeing 737 business jet Blinken uses is owned and operated by the U.S. Air Force out of Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. The base is home to the special airlift mission, which maintains planes secure enough to transport VIPs such as the president, vice president and cabinet secretaries.
Unlike the Boeing MAX family of aircraft at the heart of recent problems with consumer flights, the USAF’s upgraded 737-700 is known as a C-40 under its military moniker. According to the Air Force, it entered service in 2003. Beyond being a military plane, the 737-700 is a different model than the 737 MAX 9 model that’s been grounded pending inspections after a door panel blew out midair.
The secretary of state is expected to return Wednesday evening on a different government Boeing plane, according to a U.S. official. His staff and accompanying press pool flew back to Washington in commercial aircraft.
Alex Ward and Lara Seligman contributed to this report.
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