The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has a bad omen whenever she plans to travel abroad. Her presidential plane often crashes and instead has to travel commercially. That is why the German government has set up a "cunning" plan to break this bad omen. To ensure that Merkel will travel to the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, June 28 and 29, the government has set up two Airbus A350s on standby. A German Air Force official confirmed the plan to the DPA. One of the aircraft will be placed in the runway at Berlin's Tegel airport, fully equipped and ready to transport the chauffeur if the first plane suffers from technical problems before taking off.
Government officials say the second plane will fly to Tokyo if the first plane is able to start without a crash and the plane itself will be used as an alternative if the first plane can not return to Merkel.
The official air fleet suffered a lot of technical malfunctions, which caused an embarrassing delay for many senior ministers and officials last year. In November, Merkel was forced to travel on a commercial flight to Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, after causing an electrical fault on her A340, to delay her flight.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier was late on a trip to several African countries in 2018 when his government-run plane, Theodos Hughes, faced technical problems. His trip to Belarus ended in July when his Konrad Adenauer suffered problems in its hydraulic system.
Following these failures, the German government has offered to purchase three new Airbus A350s for long-haul flights after repeated technical failures on its current fleet. The Defense Ministry said in April that the three planes cost 1.2 billion euros ($ 1.3 billion). The first is expected to be delivered in 2020, the second and the third at the end of 2022. An official source said the A340-300 aircraft currently in operation would be phased out. "The new aircraft will strengthen the Ministry of Defense's readiness for long flights," a government statement said.