Summary
- Pete Hegseth's plane made an emergency landing in the UK.
- Landing caused by crack in aircraft windshield mid-flight.
- Incident occurred during return from NATO meeting in Belgium.
On social media, Pentagon spokeswoman Sean Parnell stated that a break in the aircraft's windshield, also referred to as a windscreen, caused the plane to make an "unscheduled landing in the United Kingdom" on the route back to the United States following NATO's Defense Ministers conference in Belgium.
According to standard procedures, the plane landed, and Hegseth and every other passenger were safe, Parnell said.
“All good. Thank God,”
Hegseth wrote on X.
“Continue mission!”
Hegseth's aircraft was a C-32A, a modified Boeing 757 that the Air Force uses to transport VIPs. When traveling to locations with runways too short for the modified Boeing-747 that Trump usually flies as Air Force One, other high-ranking officials, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice President JD Vance, and occasionally even President Donald Trump, use the aircraft.
The aircraft took off from Brussels, passed Ireland, and then turned around to land at Royal Air Force Mildenhall in England at 7:07 p.m. local time, according to flight monitoring data. The plane's original takeoff time was unknown.
For international travel, Hegseth and former defense secretaries have historically flown the Boeing E-4B.
In the event of a nuclear conflict, the president or Pentagon leadership can deploy the modified Boeing E-4B as an airborne command post. Within the Air Force, it is referred to as the "Doomsday plane" and "Air Force One when it counts."
The reason for Hegseth's flight aboard the smaller C-32 aircraft was not immediately apparent. Due to improvements made during Trump's first term as president, the C-32, which had to make an emergency landing, has a more opulent cabin but less capabilities than the E-4B.