The First Lady’s plane landed safely and everyone is safe and sound.
Melania Trump was on a plane that had to turn around and make an emergency landing due to smoke in the cockpit, ABC News is reporting.
The First Lady was on her way to Philadelphia to visit Thomas Jefferson University Hospital when the aircraft she was riding suffered some sort of malfunction. A Fox News reporter who was on-board with Mrs. Trump said they noticed “a thin haze of smoke and smell [of] something burning.” About ten minutes later, the smell was so strong that Secret Service agents and other passengers had to hold towels over their noses, and the aircraft was forced to turn around. The aircraft landed safely at Joint Base Andrews, according to Fox News
Once the plane and its passengers were on the ground safely, the first lady’s communications director Stephanie Grisham issued a statement saying that the smell was from “a malfunctioning [communications] unit.”
Mrs. Trump was on board a Boeing VC-35A, which is itself a 757 that has been retrofitted with military technology. The particular aircraft Mrs. Trump was on was built in 1998.
Though emblazoned with the robin’s-egg blue and the words “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,” like Air Force One, the craft Mrs. Trump was using was not that aircraft. Officially, any aircraft with the president on-board, even if it’s his friend’s Cessna, is given the handle Air Force One while the president is on board. Two specific planes, officially known by their tail numbers 28000 and 29000, are the planes on which the president generally flies; those two craft are colloquially referred to as Air Force One.
Mrs. Trump was headed to Philadelphia to campaign for her “Be Best” initiative, as well as to highlight the opioid epidemic. She was placed on a different aircraft and was able to complete her trip without incident.
This is not the first time a presidential aircraft has suffered mechanical problems. As CBS News reported at the time, back in 2006 a mechanical problem grounded one of the two official Air Force One aircraft while it was in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, while then-president George W. Bush was in the country for the 21-nation Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Hanoi. Bush later completed the next leg of his Asia tour, to Indonesia, on a backup aircraft.
Neither the White House nor the Air Force specified what the issue was. The aircraft was repaired before Bush made the much-longer journey from Indonesia to Honolulu.
Source: Read Full Article