But a back-up plane was being flown to Singapore to transport Mr. Gates on Monday if needed.
This sort of trouble is rare enough to be described as a freak event, which explains why – because this race is run by the Tour de France organisers Amaury Sport Organisation – the nearest back-up plane was in France, and took time to prepare and to fly over.
They walked down the stairs of Air Force Two, picked up a newspaper that had been placed there, then walked back up to the plane, like a couple going back inside their house.
The pilot pulled up on the rudder and lifted the plane back up, but there was more to come.
With the end of the runway approaching rapidly, the pilots put the plane back up into the sky.
After the pilots were forced to take the plane back up into the sky, they consulted their manuals and found procedures for the failure of engine controls on either the right or left engine, but not both.
On Easter I had my own near-death experience when my airplane almost crashed onto the tarmac at Newark Airport, forcing the pilot to pull the plane back up into the sky at the last moment before impact.
The planes will be overhauled by a Saudi-based Boeing-Saudi joint venture, Alsalam Aircraft Co. Bringing two commercial planes back up to speed may seem a minor matter, and Boeing's spokesman says that for the company's purposes, the only concern is aircraft safety.
Computers on the ground would integrate this data and send the signal back up to all other planes within hundreds of miles.
Boeing and other companies that rely on the volatile lithium-ion batteries, including hybrid carmakers, worry about public perceptions of the batteries and want to get the planes back up in the air as soon as possible.
Somehow, miraculously the plane bobbed back up from the water and rested on top of it.
