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A Royal Australian Air Force KC-30A has landed in Sydney after ferrying Prime Minister Anthony Albanese around the United States and performing an unscheduled emergency landing in Missouri.
A39-007 (similar aircraft pictured), which was tasked to transport Prime Minister Albanese to key meetings including with US President Donald Trump, touched down in Sydney shortly before 11:30am on Thursday.
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The plane had previously made news on Wednesday after it was rerouted mid-flight to St Louis Lambert International Airport in Missouri due to a medical emergency. A crew member was struck in the head by overhead luggage causing the incident according to media reports.
The Prime Minister’s office previously confirmed that the flight was rerouted due to “an officer requiring medical assistance on the flight from Washington DC to Honolulu”, according to a spokesperson speaking with the ABC.
It spent almost three hours on the tarmac in St Louis before resuming its journey to Australia, with a refuelling stop in Honolulu.
PM Albanese was in the US to meet with President Donald Trump and other US officials on issues including trade and the AUKUS agreement.
“(This) has been my seventh visit to the United States as Prime Minister, my third since the federal election in May, and it has been a very significant visit,” the PM told media at a press conference in Washington this week.
“It has been fantastic to be here in Washington DC to meet President Trump and other key members of the US administration … I thank the President again for his hospitality.”
The PM also addressed concerns about AUKUS, on which the United States is conducting a review, saying he is confident the agreement will proceed.
“We did a review, the UK did a review. The United States is doing a review. Nothing unusual about that when there’s a change of government,” he said.
“What is very clear is that there is agreement about AUKUS and what is also clear is that as you build a major project, we’re talking about a project with considerable cost. It’s not simple. It has stages to it. Inevitably, of course, as you go, you’ll constantly have an assessment to make sure you’re getting everything right.
“You don’t say in something that’s going to go to the 2040s, this is exactly how things are going to occur, because you want to make sure you get it right. That is all that is occurring here. And that’s precisely what the President himself said, the head of the Navy yesterday, said, I don’t think it can be clearer.”
