Pentagon chief’s plane diverted to UK due to cracked windshield on flight from Brussels back 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 aircraft lose altitude and begin broadcasting an emergency signal.

In February, an Air Force plane carrying Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, 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.