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Bumpy start to G20 summit for Merkel after plane is forced to make emergency landing

AFP
AFP - [email protected]
Bumpy start to G20 summit for Merkel after plane is forced to make emergency landing
Angela Merkel leaving the plane on Thursday night. Photo: DPA

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was expected to fly out to the G20 summit in Argentina on Friday after her original flight was forced to make an emergency landing in Cologne due to a technical problem.

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"We will not be proceeding today," Merkel's spokeswoman told AFP on Thursday night.

According to tweets by German journalists on board the Airbus A340, named Konrad Adenauer after Germany's first post-war chancellor, Merkel will leave for Madrid on Friday and head on a commercial flight for Buenos Aires with a
slimmed down delegation.

The Chancellery did not confirm these reports.

A senior journalist with the public national television ZDF said Merkel would spend Thursday night in Bonn.

The plane turned back from the Netherlands and landed in Cologne because it was the only base with a replacement aircraft, the DPA news agency said.

The aircraft had taken off from Berlin at 7 p.m. and landed in Cologne around 8.30 p.m. Passengers had to wait on the plane for around 70 minutes, eyewitnesses said.

It was met on the tarmac by fire engines, DPA said, adding that the captain told the passengers the plane would have to turn back as a technical problem was disrupting several electrical systems.

The picture shows  the Konrad Adenauer aircraft's changed route. Photo: DPA

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