A Reuters correspondent has published a detailed account of the flight he believed was carrying President Donald Trump from Turkey, unaware that the president had been secretly transferred to another aircraft hidden inside a catering supply truck.
Graham Slattery begins his narrative by noting that "from the beginning, something didn't add up." The unusual sequence of events started during the final hours of the NATO leaders' summit in Ankara in July 2026, when Trump announced on social media that he would not be flying home on the new presidential aircraft that had been gifted by Qatar the previous year.
Instead, Trump claimed he had sent the plane ahead to Royal Air Force Mildenhall in England so that service members and their families could tour it, without clarifying how he would ultimately reach Washington.
Slattery, traveling as part of the press pool accompanying the president, found the explanation implausible. "The schedule change was confusing, and Trump's explanation seemed completely unlikely," he writes. Journalists quickly began speculating among themselves whether Iran had hatched a concrete plot to assassinate the president.
According to the reporter, virtually no one believed Trump's explanations, and tension among the press corps began mounting. The exact travel route remained a mystery, though journalists assumed they were still heading back to Washington as planned after the UK stop. If initial security concerns were valid, the Qatari-provided aircraft—which lacked certain safety features—would have been unsuitable.
During those hours, Slattery and his colleagues realized they were "facing a far more dangerous flight than usual." Trump had inadvertently fueled speculation about potential threats throughout the summit's final day.
The president repeatedly claimed during press conferences in Ankara that the Iranians wanted to kill him and that he was "number one on their list." While meeting with various leaders—from Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa to Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky—he brought up Iran's ongoing attempts to assassinate him in conversations with reporters. After a press conference where he dodged most questions about switching planes, the sense that something was wrong only intensified.
Slattery continues his account: "When we boarded what we believed was the aircraft carrying the president, White House staff instructed journalists to close the window shades. When we demanded an explanation, we were told it was at the Secret Service's request. Having flown on the presidential plane before, I knew this requirement was completely abnormal."
Only weeks later did it emerge that the instruction was designed to help conceal a covert operation in which Trump left the plane via a food supply truck and boarded a different government aircraft due to security concerns. Aboard the plane itself, answers were extremely difficult to obtain, as journalists have no access to wireless networks for security reasons.
"The flight from Ankara to Mildenhall passed without special incidents, but it was hard to relax. We mistakenly believed the president could appear at any moment, and the circumstances surrounding the flight remained a mystery. But when we landed in England in the late evening hours, the journey took another extraordinary turn.
As we disembarked, we saw Trump descending from a different section of the aircraft—part of the deception exercise in retrospect. White House staff asked us to follow Trump on foot as he walked toward the Qatari plane parked hundreds of meters away. Secret Service agents flanked the president and a black SUV advanced slowly to our right," he describes.
The reporter says something already seemed highly suspicious to him: "The maneuver immediately struck me as dramatically and conspicuously cinematic, especially since you weren't sure what its purpose was. After we boarded the new plane and took off, a White House staffer provided journalists with a printout of a Trump Truth Social post that included a dark photo of service members and their families.
Moments later, the president visited the press cabin, where we peppered him with questions about the real reasons he hadn't taken the Qatari plane to England. It wasn't clear for another month that Trump hadn't traveled with us to Mildenhall at all and that a third plane had been involved.
During the flight, he denied that security concerns were a factor. But when I surprised him by asking why we had to close the window shades, he acknowledged the ongoing threats he faces from Iran.
"But if I go, you go. Right?" Trump said. "Maybe someday you'll want to change professions."
