THE Prime Minister’s aircraft was accelerating down the runway. It had reached 90mph and was only seconds from take off. Suddenly there was a loud bang, sparks flew from a starboard engine and then the engine failed altogether. The flight was aborted.
Tony Blair made light of his brush with disaster at Johannesburg airport on Sunday night. “Another few seconds and we would have been in the air. Suddenly there was a bang. I didn’t have time to be particularly worried about it,” he told reporters before making his way back to Britain on a scheduled flight yesterday.

Downing Street said: “In the technical jargon, this is termed a minor incident.”

But The Times has learnt that Mr Blair’s chartered plane was 36 years old, posing the question why the Prime Minister of one of the world’s biggest economies was in such an old, albeit refurbished, aircraft.

The aircraft — converted for VIP passengers — was a DC8 built in 1969 or 1970, though its engines were replaced 16 years ago.

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