An aircraft carrying US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth back to the US from Nato talks inBrusselshad to make an unscheduled landing in the UK after suffering a cracked windshield.
Sean Parnell, chief Pentagon spokesman, confirmed the plane landed without issue and the crew and passengers, including Mr Hegseth, were safe onboard.
He posted on X: ‘On the way back to theUnited Statesfrom NATO’s Defense Ministers meeting, Secretary of War Hegseth’s plane made an unscheduled landing in the United Kingdom due to a crack in the aircraft windshield.
‘The plane landed based on standard procedures and everyone onboard, including Secretary Hegseth, is safe.’
Mr Hegseth also posted: ‘All good. Thank God. Continue mission!’
The aviation news website Airlive reported that the Boeing C-32A – a military version of the Boeing 757 – was about 30 minutes into the flight when it suffered a “depressurisation issue”.
It went on to land atRAFMildenhall inSuffolkat about 7.10pm.
Aviation expert Bernard Lavelle toldMetrowhat makes the incident interesting is that it happened less than a month after a similiar accident with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
He added: ‘But it’s not actually that uncommon to have cracked windshields. A lot of cracked windshields you wouldn’t hear about because they’re on a private jet or a general aviation jet.
‘But it does happen commercially. The research I found is that it can happen maybe once, twice, or three times a month. But to put that in context, if you look at OAG data, which records all capacity on flights, you’d roughly have 105,000 flights a day worldwide. So it’s a tiny fraction of flights affected.’
The modern windshield of a plane has about three or four layers, Lavelle explained, so if one part cracks, the rest generally has enough protection that it won’t be a large issue.
The major concern with a cracked windshield is when the crack happens – if it occurs above 35,000 feet, the oxygen masks would drop down immediately.
‘All pilots are trained to deal with that kind of incident by making sure they get down to a lower level, usually around 10,000 feet, where they don’t need additional oxygen. Passengers and crew can just breathe normally when they get down to around 10,000 feet,’ he said.
‘Going back to causes, weather can be an issue. Changes in air pressure can be an issue, especially if the aircraft hasn’t been maintained properly. Now, you would think a U.S. Air Force aircraft would be maintained properly, especially if it carries such senior people.
‘But if the windshield hasn’t been checked—they check them every time, but they will check it when they need to—that could be an issue. There could be a slight misalignment in the fitting of the windshield, or something got in and disrupted the alignment.’
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