New Delhi: United States President Donald Trump disappeared in July 2026 without anyone noticing while returning from a NATO summit in Turkey, where he boarded Air Force One and then boarded another plane, with the whole incident getting a documentary in the third part of Netflix’s Instadoc: The Decoy Plane.
After leaving Turkey, Trump was publicly seen boarding what was understood to be Air Force One and even posted that he would take the aircraft to Mildenhall in Suffolk, England. However, he secretly exited through the back and was taken via an airport catering truck to an Air Force C-32A, a smaller military aircraft.
There were several US reporters who were following Trump on his trip, but they did not know about the change. All were unaware that the President was not with them, and when the story broke out, the internet was filled with theories.
The documentary tries to document the incident by collecting and talking to the journalists who witnessed the disappearance, such as Gram Slattery, a White House reporter for Reuters, Alex Brandon, a White House photographer for The Associated Press; plus perspectives from Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Carol Leonnig of MS NOW, The Washington Post’s Dan Lamothe, who was part of the reporting team that broke the story, former Secret Service agent Robert McDonald and former Air Force One crew member Wanda Joell.
The documentary will also show the extent to which the Secret Service goes to protect the President. This instalment reveals the cost of that mission: to get him home safely, a plane full of reporters and the public they answer to were left flying blind.
Instadocs is a Netflix original documentary series with two previous instalments. The first, Instadocs: Alex Murdaugh, Unconvicted, revisited the case of Alex Murdaugh after his murder convictions were overturned, examining the jury misconduct that led to the decision and what it could mean for the case. Whereas the second part, Instadocs: The Prediction Games, documented the growing world of prediction markets, exploring platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi and the ways people are increasingly betting on everything from politics and sports to global events.
The third instalment is set to premiere on 4 September.
(Edited by Insha Jalil Waziri)