Washington– WASHINGTON – Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plane made an unscheduled landing in the United Kingdom because of a cracked windshield during a flight back to the United States from a NATO meeting, and that everyone on board is safe, the Pentagon said.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a post on X.
After Hegseth left Brussels, open source flight tracking devices detected his C-32 losing altitude and began broadcasting an emergency signal.
No members of the Pentagon press corps traveled with Hegseth, as was standard practice under previous defense secretaries. Instead, Pentagon reporters were emptying their desks and cleaning out their workspaces after rejecting new rules for Pentagon-based journalists.
In February, an Air Force C-32 plane carrying Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Jim Risch, was similarly attacked. He had to return to Washington After a problem with the cockpit windshield. The accident occurred about 90 minutes after the flight took off from Joint Base Andrews outside Washington.
The C-32, a specially modified version of the Boeing 757-200 commercial jet, carries American leaders, including the Vice President, First Lady, and members of the Cabinet and Congress.