Harris faces mid-air scare en route to Latin America
GUATEMALA CITY: US vice-president Kamala Harris’s departure for a trip to Guatemala and Mexico was briefly delayed on Sunday after her plane returned to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland with an unspecified technical issue and a replacement was swapped in.
After the plane landed back at the military base outside Washington, Harris gave a thumbs-up to reporters and said, “I’m good. I’m good.”
She took off about two hours later on a different aircraft.
The original plane turned back not long after take-off due to “a technical issue with the vice president’s plane”, spokeswoman Symone Sanders said on Sunday. “There are no major safety concerns and we will be able to land safely.”
Harris had ditched her usual jetliner because of a technical issue during a stop in Los Angeles in March. At that time, she switched to a smaller plane.
She landed at an air force base outside Guatemala City on Sunday evening, bringing a message of “hope” to a region hammered by Covid-19 and which is the source of most of the undocumented migrants seeking entry to the US.
Harris, who will also visit
Mexico, is making her first journey abroad as President Joe Biden’s deputy with an eye towards tackling the root causes of migration from the region - a thorny issue facing the White House. “I am here in Guatemala City for my first international trip as vice-president,” she tweeted after her arrival.