Defense Minister Pete Hegseth, who was returning to the US after attending the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) meeting in Brussels, the capital of Belgium, was diverted to Britain due to a crack in the window glass of his plane.
An official of the Pentagon, the headquarters of the US Defense Department, gave this information. The official said that all the people on board the plane are safe. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a post on the social media platform X that the plane landed “based on standard procedures.”
After Hegseth took off from Brussels, the open source flight tracker detected that his C-32 aircraft was unable to reach altitude and was broadcasting an emergency signal.
No members of the ‘Pentagon Press Corps’ were traveling with Hegseth due to their disapproval of the new rules for journalists at the Pentagon. In February, an Air Force C-32 plane carrying US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Senator Jim Risch, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had to return to Washington due to a problem with the cockpit window glass.
The incident occurred about 90 minutes after takeoff from Joint Base Andrews outside Washington. The C-32 is a custom-built version of the Boeing 757-200 commercial aircraft used by US leaders including the Vice President, the First Lady, and members of the Cabinet and Congress.