When Marco Rubio’s Plane Almost Ran Out of Fuel

BY EDWARD KLEIN / AUGUST 12, 2015

A big part of Sen. Marco Rubio’s campaign theme is his Cuban immigrant family’s struggle to achieve the American dream. He never loses an opportunity to point out that his father was a bartender and his mother a maid.

Now that he’s a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and is raising millions of dollars, has his lifestyle changed? Recently, ED KLEIN CONFIDENTIAL ran into the junior senator from Florida on a U.S. Airways flight from Charlotte, N.C., to Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., and discovered that he is still far from living the high life of private jets and limos.

Rubio was trying to prepare for the first Republican presidential debate, but he was crammed into a seat in the packed coach section, which was filled with howling babies. Shortly before takeoff, however, he was upgraded to a bulkhead aisle seat in business class.

Fierce electric storms slashed much of the mid-Atlantic states, and the plane bounced like a bucking bronco. When we finally arrived over Reagan National Airport, air traffic controllers kept the plane circling for so long that the pilot came on the public address system and announced to the stunned passengers that he was running out of fuel.

Finally air traffic control relented and cleared the flight to land. Once on the ground, Rubio was rattled but ironic. When a supporter greeted the candidate in the terminal and said he hoped he would go all the way to the White House, Rubio quipped, “I do, too, so I won’t have to fly commercial anymore. I bet Air Force One doesn’t run out of fuel.”