A plane carrying Brazil's president back home returns to Mexico City due to a technical problem

SAO PAULO — Brazil’s air force said Tuesday that the airplane carrying Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva experienced a technical problem after leaving Mexico City and will return to the country’s capital so he can board another flight to return home.

The aircraft, an Airbus A319, was still flying over the Mexican capital on Tuesday afternoon, the Brazilian air force said in a statement. The airplane had been in the air for two hours, according to plane tracking site FlightAware.

The Brazilian air force added that “security procedures for the problem” were performed successfully, but pilots must “wait for the necessary fuel consumption so the airplane returns to the same airport it took off from.”

Earlier, Lula attended the inauguration of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum. He arrived in Mexico on Monday and had a meeting with outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The plane was circling the Felipe Angeles airport, about an hour’s drive north of Mexico City. The commercial airport was built on a military base by former president López Obrador after he canceled the larger partially-built airport closer to the city. Foreign dignitaries, including U.S. First lady Jill Biden, had flown into the airport to attend Sheinbaum’s inauguration.

In January, an airplane carrying Lula's security team also faced technical problems during a trip to the northeastern Brazilian state of Paraiba. The airplane could not take off. Brazil's presidency said after the incident that the staffers were never at risk.