ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
Coming just days after the First Daughter sat in for her father during a G20 world leaders meeting, Ivanka Trump has sat in for one of the seven pilots tasked with flying Air Force One back to Washington from Hamburg overnight.
The White House confirmed Ms Trump was at the controls of the Boeing 747-200B as it touched down in the US capital in the early hours of the morning after she relieved a high-experienced Air Force Flight Commander and qualified astronaut midway over the North Atlantic.
“Ms Trump, the First Daughter, was flying the aircraft as it came into land this morning,” said White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer.
“Though she does not have a type rating on the 747 aircraft or even a pilot’s licence, her position and relationship with the President overrode that. If the President says she can fly the plane, she can fly the plane,”
“End of story.”
The bold stunt attracted criticism from aviation commentators and insiders, who explained to The Advocate via an encrypted end-to-end messenger that it’s ‘very reckless’ to let someone who doesn’t know how to fly a plane be at the controls of one.
However, many of those same insiders have conceded that there’s not much they can do or say about the President letting his daughter sit in for an Air Force One pilot.
“It’s just one of those things,” said one commentator.
“It’s something you’d hear come out of North Korea that’d be taken as a myth or something, you know? It’s hard to articulate but what the President has done here is set a precedent. Honestly, I would be more comfortable with Baron at the controls.”
“But as my father always told me; it is what it is, then you die.”
More to come.
