Plane carrying JD Vance makes emergency landing in Milwaukee then resumes flight

Plane departed for Cincinnati after stopping to address possible issue with door seal

A charter plane carrying Republican vice presidential nominee Senator JD Vance conducted an emergency landing on Friday in Wisconsin, after its pilot reported potential mechanical issues.

The Eastern Air Boeing 737 jet conducted an emergency landing at Milwaukee International Airport around 1:30pm, airport officials told WISN, landing normally and taxiing under its own power.

A Vance spokesperson told CNN that the plane’s pilot "advised there was a malfunction with the door seal.”

“After declaring an emergency, Trump Force Two returned to Milwaukee,” the spokesperson said. “As soon as the issue was resolved, the plane returned to its originally planned flight path back to Cincinnati.”

The emergency landing took place while Vance’s wife, dog, staff members, and traveling news reporters were onboard, according to The Washington Post.

Local news cameras showed the plane departing normally about an hour after the emergency landing.

Vance was in Milwaukee for a campaign speech to the city’s police union, where he accused Kamala Harris of making policing harder and wrongly spending money on immigrants to the US.

The Trump-Vance campaign has been campaigning across battleground states like Wisconsin, seeking to win back momentum from the Harris-Walz campaign, who have pulled ahead slightly in the polls.

The sudden stop comes less than a week after Donald Trump’s Boeing 757 plane was diverted from landing in Bozeman, Montana, to an airport in Billings due to mechanical problems.

“His aircraft had mechanical issues, and he was diverted into the Billings-Logan Airport,” a spokesperson for the airport said at the time. “He’s continuing to Bozeman on a private jet,” they added.

Boeing has been under heavy scrutiny in recent months, due to mechanical issues on its passenger jets and its Starliner space craft.