U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was unable to fly home from Davos on schedule today due to a critical malfunction of his plane, Bloomberg reports.
According to the State Department's press service, after departing Davos by helicopter to land at the airport on a state-owned modified Boeing 737, Blinken and his team were told that the plane was deemed unsafe for flight. An oxygen leak discovered earlier could not be repaired.
A smaller plane took off from Brussels to Zurich, Switzerland, to bring the American diplomat home, while many of his aides and members of the press pool were forced to fly to Washington on commercial flights.
As Bloomberg writes, in addition to inconvenience for Blinken and his team, this could be a huge embarrassment for Boeing, which is already having trouble with its 737-Max 9 aircraft after a piece of the fuselage fell off during a flight.
Background. As a reminder, Boeing admitted that it was involved in the accident with the 737 Max 9 aircraft, which had a door torn off during the flight.