WORLD : Diana’s Jet Lands for Repair
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LONDON — A royal jet carrying Princess Diana was forced to make an emergency landing today because of an electrical problem that cropped up just after takeoff on the first leg of a visit to Hungary.
Engineers repaired the problem and the 28-year-old princess of Wales and her entourage later left on the first official visit to a Warsaw Pact nation by members of the House of Windsor, authorities said.
The first stop was to be in Ancona, Italy, where the royal party was to pick up Prince Charles, Diana’s husband and the heir to the British throne, before flying on to the Hungarian capital of Budapest. Prince Charles was in Italy to open his first exhibition of watercolor paintings.
The unspecified electrical fault was detected shortly after the BAE-146 aircraft--manned by the Queen’s Flight, members of the Royal Air Force--took off from London’s Heathrow Airport, authorities said. The pilot immediately diverted to London’s nearby Gatwick Airport, where the problem was solved. The princess and her party of about 20 remained aboard the aircraft while British Airways engineers fixed the problem.
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