Pentagon chief’s plane diverted to UK due to cracked windshield on flight from Brussels to US

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plane made an unscheduled landing in the United Kingdom because a windshield cracked on a flight back to the U.S. from a NATO meeting and all aboard are safe, the Pentagon said.

The plane landed “based on standard procedures,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a post on X.

After Hegseth left Brussels, open source flight trackers spotted his C-32 lose altitude and begin broadcasting an emergency signal.

No members of the Pentagon press corps were traveling with Hegseth, as was regular practice under previous defense secretaries. Instead, Pentagon reporters were emptying their desks and cleaning out their workspaces after rejecting new rules for journalists based in the Pentagon.

In February, an Air Force C-32 carrying Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Jim Risch, was similarly forced to return to Washington after an issue with the cockpit windshield. The incident occurred about 90 minutes after the flight took off from Joint Base Andrews outside of Washington.

The C-32, a specially configured version of the Boeing 757-200 commercial airplane, transports U.S. leaders, including the vice president, first lady and members of the Cabinet and Congress.