Defence Minister Radu Miruta explained on Thursday why President Nicusor Dan could not return on Tuesday evening from the meeting of the heads of state or government of the Coalition of Wills in Paris. One of the reasons was that the Spartan airplane that was to fly Dan back to Romania could not take off from Bucharest due to bad weather.
"There has been a lot of misinformation in the public space regarding the latest flight of President Nicusor Dan to Paris. (...) The aircraft did not take off from Bucharest to Paris on Tuesday evening, as initially scheduled, because of the weather conditions, the weather conditions in Bucharest, when it should have landed on Tuesday evening, were below the level for which the Spartan aircraft of the Ministry of Defence is equipped to land. If the cloud ceiling is below 60 metres and visibility is below 600 metres, this aircraft cannot land, especially if the President of Romania is on board. It is a flight device configured for military missions, it also lands in worse weather conditions than those of minimum safety, but this does not happen with the president on board. Why didn't he leave the next day immediately in the morning? Because the state of the airport did not allow take-off. The plane was ready, the plane has absolutely no problem, but the snowfalls, with the need for de-icing, with the airport's ability to free the runway from snow, did not allow taxiing on the runway," Miruta told a news conference.
On Wednesday, the Spartan plane, with the official delegation on board, managed to take off from Paris around 16:30hrs, after two failed attempts during the day due to snow. The official delegation and the journalists who accompanied the president should have returned to Bucharest on Tuesday evening
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