British Mediterranean Airways flight intercepted over the Netherlands

[Aireps]

Two Dutch F16s fighter jets intercepted British Mediterranean Airways flight 6522 over the Netherlands on Sunday 29 May at around 10:40 AM local time. The F16s were scrambled from Twenthe AFB (EHTW) in the Netherlands, not far from the German border. Flight LAJ6522, an Airbus 320 with registration G-MEDH flying from OJAI to EGLL, entered Dutch airspace from the East at FL380 and failed to contact ATC at Maastricht Eurocontrol. One of the F16 fighter pilots used hand signals to alert the pilot of the British Mediterranean airliner.

Weather and visibility were excellent. The interception was witnessed by many people on the ground who noticed the contrails of the F16s and the airliner close together.

[moosp]

Your Tax dollars at work. A complete waste of resources by the military leader who launched them, following orders from a civil service knee jerk.

In more enlightened times the Airbus would have continued blissfully on its way until they had finished the crossword and called in. They would then have had a mighty bol***king from Maastricht and all would be resolved.

We are getting so close to another USS Vincennes here.

[longstay]

What on earth for ?, what were they doing, seeing if it really was an airliner ??, or if it was still flying ??, what complete crap, and what happens these days if we have a radio failiure ???

[tightcircuit]

Moosp you are only partly right. The "scramble" will have been a good excuse for a bit of training and testing the reaction readiness of the F16's. They do that regularly anyway but without a real target to look at. Probably a no cost exercise unless the military use it as an argument to increase their funding a bit!

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

<<and what happens these days if we have a radio failiure ???>>

There is a way of indicating that you have radio failure. Anyone who does not employ this but charges on regardless needs questions asking.

[enquirer]

Oh my goodness - not again.

How many more times will this happen @ BMed?

[Lon More]

Full details here (http://www.luchtvaartnieuws.nl/news/?id=8727) Summarized - it happens several times per year: the cost, as a % of total training bill, is insignificant, however, means of recovering the cost from airlines under consideration; since 911, SOP;

There was considerable F16 activity in the Dutch airspace om Sunday, including a fly past at the American Cemetary at Margraten, near Maastricht - also a presence at various places as it was Army Day.

As HD points out, a professional pilot would know what action to take whilst others might just sit back and bask in the silence as they flew through some of Europe's busiest airspace.

If there had been something wrong, wasn't it nice to know someone cares?

[BEagle]

Is this yet another example of 8.33 KHz radio sleeping sickness, perhaps?

[El Grifo]

DRIEBERGEN - Gevechtsvliegtuigen van de Koninklijke Luchtmacht (KLu) kiezen elk jaar tientallen keren het luchtruim voor het uitvoeren van een zogenoemde QRA (Quick Reaction Alert). Slechts in enkele gevallen bereikt zo'n onderscheppingsactie het nieuws. "Alleen als we er van buitenaf om worden gevraagd of als er een F-16 door de geluidsbarrière gegaan is", meldt luchtmachtwoordvoerder Jos van der Leij vandaag (30 mei) aan Luchtvaartnieuw


Right - - - That clarifies things. Now we fully understand the situation.


Jeeeezuuuus, the arrogance of the man.



:ugh:


Dutch - - Once described thus :- "not so much of a language, more of a throat disease"

[Lon More]

Jeeeezuuuus, the arrogance of the man.
For non Dutch speakers I summarised it briefly.

Jeeeeeezuuuuus, the stupidity of the man!

[A-FLOOR]

Of course, for people who refuse to use Google and go on how Dutch is like a throat disease there is always Altavista's Babelfish:

http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.luchtvaartnieuws.nl%2 Fnews%2F%3Fid%3D8727&lp=nl_en

:E

(Remember that it takes a few seconds for the whole thing to be translated)

[Pointer]

El Grifo Ahhh the unlimited joy we receive with the blissfull multi-lingual

Mod's; of to the dungeons with this one.... :hmm:

Pointer :E

"let me point that out to you"

[TyroPicard]

Good old babelfish...

"Sunday morning left two fighting planes of the fly basis Twenthe to point out the piloten of a citizen plane on being lacking radio contact. The plane of the British BMed was on gone of amman to London and flew in without required the communication the Netherlands."

Sounds like Dubya Dutch to me....

TP

[A-FLOOR]

If you think that's thick you should try the Japanese-English one. ;)

[ComJam]

Longstay

The point is... it was in Dutch airspace, not talking to anyone and not squaking 7600 (radio fail)

Seems like a fair reason to launch "Q"

Also, it's valuable training for the Air Defence guys who don't get to intercept stuff on a very regualer basis apart from the odd exercise using military (or similar) aircraft.

(Switches safe) :)

[SirToppamHat]

I assume the crew were not monitoring VHF Guard? Always a good idea! ;)

STH

[Lon More]

I assume the crew were not monitoring VHF Guard? would have been the first thing tried SOP at Maastricht.
Info on Radio Failure flights is routinely passed to Mil Co-ordination partner and by them to Air Defence who then take the decision to intercept or not

[TopBunk]

As a thought starter ....... is it not time that ATC units had the ability to send an ACARS message to aircraft?

The should already have the aircraft reg from from the FPL, so with a little investment ATC could ACARS the a/c with a frequency to contact -or- if they held the a telephone number for the ops dept of all airlines they could ring them and get them to send an ACARS message -or- they could ask another company aircraft on same freq or agency to ACARS the company to send the message.

I know that in future CPDLC is the way forward and in the meantime not everyone has ACARS fitted, BUT, it would probably save quite a few of these instances each year.

Discuss .....

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

<<The should already have the aircraft reg from from the FPL>>

Someone will confirm this, but I'm not sure that registrations are immediately available for stored flight plans. If they were the many hundreds, if not thousands, of occasions when I experienced a "wrong a/c type" would not have happened.

[bloggs99]

IT IS SOP at BMED to monitor 121.5 on box 3 (or box 2 if 3 not fitted or not available). Note, BMED do not have ACARS.

So this was either crew error or a case of the alleged sleeping receiver. Also maybe they were give a hand over and the controller did not chase the fact he had not had a read back until he was in the next sector and out of range (sorry ATC, you have a busy sector and I'm not exonerating the crew, but you can also not help these things).

Surprising place for this to happen. Over eastern Europe it may be more common as there are quite often periods of quiet, range problems from transmitters and quite often no calls for 20-30 minutes, therefore it is more likely for crews to miss a call. Over Holland, however, you should expect a frequency change every few minutes and there will be lots of chatter going on, therefore you should question why you have not heard anything every few minutes.

However, there will be a lot of work to do before top of descent at the point where they were intercepted that can be distracting; briefing for arrival to LHR, 3 x VHF calls on box 2 to speedbird, tech one and company and a PA to the punters and normally a frequency change every few minutes. (so 121.5 often gets turned off at this time to prevent interference - lot of chatter on 121.5 these days)

These things are often caused by many factors. Pilots must listen out and question why they have not heard anything and be aware of when they should be getting handovers (and they must keep 121.5 on box 3). ATC must question earlier why they have not had a read back of a frequency change or have not had an aircraft check in.

Similar thing happened in BMED over Bulgaria 6 months or so ago prompting SOP changes and a flurry of management and trainers getting excited over it. So these guys backsides might get a bit warm over this.

[Farmer 1]

Just as well it didn't happen in USSR airspace.

[Lon More]

Top Bunk Maastricht has the capability to send such messages and a/c euipped to receive it are so indicated by the system.
Farmer1 Two or three controllers per sector at Maastricht depending on traffic levels. Unassumed traffic, i.e. traffic in or about to enter your sector but not yet in contact, flashes. When in contact an Ässume"input is made which increases the brightness of track and label information, also co-ordination info is then displayed.
It is, of course, possible to "assume in error" as this is all done by mouse clicks on a 3 button mouse (due to stupidity and damaged nerves in right hand I was forever doing this) and then theprevious sector believes the flight was transferred until too late and he is out of range, however another a/c can be used to relay a message. This doesn't happen too often as most flights require some vectoring or level change in Maastricht Airspace. That said, and looking at dep. and dest. there is a possibility that the flight had been re-routed by flow control to avoid Belgium, but was still given a shorter than normal routing along the Belgian Dutch border and each sector believed he was working the other. Not very likely though.
Hope this helps, all a bit vague, as I'm no longer working there.

[Preppy]

TopBunk

Your idea about ACARS communication is valid. However, unlike BA a/c, BMED's airbii have their ATSU C/B pulled so that the ACARS is inoperative. Reason: cost saving?

[TopBunk]

Preppy

Thanks for the info, however, I didn't say that it would have prevented this instance, just some of them. IMHO it is very sad that the bean counters interfere with sensible technological advances that could result in substantial benefit. Especially with BMeds network to more remote areas where volmet information is less widley available I would have thought that ACARS would prove most useful to the operation.

[stator vane]

this thread gives the opportunity for me to ask others what they really think about the non-com procedures we find in the Jepp manuals.

i fly out of STN and from time to time i actually read the emergency sections and each time i come away with a feeling of hopelessness. not only is there a general section that gives ICAO things to do, but each country has it's own section which is further divided into individual airport/area procedures. to try to remember all these different emergency procedures is a real test, and to imagine trying to read and do in a real situation gives me the heebiejeebies.

after reading that section, i wished that each aircraft had a minimum of sixteen different com radios, each with it's own independent power source and antenna.

are your books just as complicated?

cheers;

[Sans Anoraque]

Re the 'languge bashing' the person who said "Dutch, not so much a language, more a throat disease" was John Cleese.

Perhaps he wasn't being entirely serious.

Helaas, Pinderkaas.

[Check 6]

Almost everytime I fly over Switzerland I get intercepted by F-18's. The pax enjoy it, and I get some new photos. The lead pilot waves and departs.

What's the big deal?

This is excellent training for the Air Defense pilots. The more training the better.

Check 6

:ok:

[kellmark]

How about a functional flight monitoring system where the airline would have a qualified, trained flight dispatcher with a separate communication system that can contact the aircraft with SELCAL and/or ACARS along with an aircraft situation display that shows the position of the aircraft as it proceeds? If ATC loses contact, then this system could be used to confirm the aircraft's position and have the crew contact ATC. It would avoid situations like this as well as provide the crew with much better information regarding weather, atc, notams, etc, while the flight is enroute. It is terrible that ACARS is turned off.

If you remember, a similar but worse situation happened last year with Air Europa from Norway to Spain where no less than 6 interceptors (3 sets of 2 aircraft each from 3 different countries) were scrambled to find the aircraft after it was lost by ATC.

The truth is that when this happens, not only ATC doesn't know what is happening but neither does the airline.

Each airline should have its own flight monitoring and communication system to support the crews properly. They should know where their aircraft are and have a system to contact them.

[Farmer 1]

This IS a big deal, chaps.

Having fighters come up, giving you a friendly wave and letting you take a few pickies is one thing, but having them come up looking for trouble, safety catches off, is another. These are military persons, working to a different set of rules from yours, and having a different mindset. Part of their job description is shooting down aeroplanes. This is why, in my first post, I said it was fortunate the incident did not occur in USSR airspace. The Authorities there were a tad touchy about aircraft entering their airspace uninvited. They tended to shoot first and not bother with the questions afterwards.

I don't know what the answer is, but it starts with the bloke sitting up front being fully aware of the situation. If these interceptions are so common, do you ever have any warning, or do the fighters just appear alongside? Isn’t there a rule about minimum proximity? If this is rule is broken, isn’t an official report in order? If so, how many per day are filed?

A story I am assured is true: An RAF crew on a routine flight saw one of their colleagues ahead, and decided to carry out a mock attack on him. They followed the correct procedure to the letter, right up to the point where the pilot says, “Fire!”

And the pilot said, “Fire!”

Couldn’t happen again, though, could it?

Using the Swiss cheese analogy, I can’t help thinking we might be working with only three or four slices of the stuff.

We must never forget, safety is no accident.

[A-FLOOR]

I'm not sure if this is the right place for this; but if a formation of our F16s (or your Tornados, for that matter) is scrambled to intercept an airliner, do they use a civilian squawk?

I suppose they could do this to be visible on the ATCOs screen and TCAS, or perhaps on the other hand it's better not to in case there really are bad guys up front who might get twitchy if they get a TCAS alert for two blips closing in fast.

I guess I've just answered my own question :}, but is there someone on here who can provide some insight into this?

[Blu2]

A friend was flying that day and apparently the Bmed was being repeatedly called on 121.5 without joy, when transferred to Maastricht it did get a bit of a telling off but maybe not as much as you'd expect considering it had just been intercepted by two F16's and hadn't noticed! Apparently the crew reported that they had been monitoring 121.5 only the volume had been turned down ( a little too much me thinks!)

Blu

[Wideeye]

Last year I wasn't so much intercepted as 'Airmissed' by Turkish F16s inside Greek airspace and I could describe the Airprox by the TCAS readout they both exhibited.:ooh:

[Low-Pass]

I really enjoy listening to 121.5. Yesterday I heard (what sounded to me like) a military controller asking an aircraft to identify itself and occasionally get to hear a PPL give a route broadcast that goes on for a minute or two...about the same length as the ribbing s/he gets from others monitoring the frequency. I also regularly hear a controller trying to contact some poor soul who has not dialed up the correct com frequency.

Check 6 How do you manage to get intercepted so much? I've flown in Swiss airspace quite a bit and have never seen a fighter or heard one. Usually, I'm looking out at the beautiful Alps so I do have my "eyes outside" a good deal of the time. Do you advise them you are happy to be intercepted or do you just turn your radio off so that you take some pics? ;)

Cheers,

LP

[Check 6]

LP, we are asked first by Swiss ATC if it would be OK to intercept us. It is very low key, with the lead pilot waving.

This is done for training on their part, and always a pleasure to form up with an F-18 on our part.




:ok:

[BOAC]

In 'the good old days' one could add 'Embellish' on the remarks section of a UK flt plan and the AD dept would then be free to carry out a practice intercept.

This eventually was stopped rather severely after (at least) a couple of whoopsies, one involving a Viscount and one where a RAF Phantom shot down a RAF Jaguar, causing much beer to be bought by the Phantom squadron.:D

[Check 6]

BOAC, that reminds me of a story that a friend told me. He was a US Marine Corps pilot in WWII, flying Corsairs out of the Solomon Islands in the S. Pacific.

A fighter that had the profile of a Japanese fighter flew by him, so he fired and shot it down. The other pilot sucessfully bailed out and was rescued.

The other pilot was an RAAF pilot. When my friend returned to base, he was met by the RAAF pilot. The rules were that my friend had to buy all of the drinks for awhile, so he did.

My friend is Colonel Jim Swett, Medal of Honor recipient.

You have to hear him tell the story. It is quite funny and I can not do it justice.

Check 6

[Dash-7 lover]

Wonder what the hand signal was????????????

[BEagle]

I used to do it the other way round. When intercepting Russian Tu-95s, the Sun calendar held up in the left DV window of a VC10K had quite an interesting effect on the chaps in the Bear.

The best photo was of the exceptionally well-endowed Samantha Fox against a black background. When we showed the Ivans that, we used to get smiling faces in those leather Russian flying helmets appearing at every window!

Sam Fox probably doesn't know the part her parts played in the collapse of the Eastern Bloc!

:D

[ETOPS]

where a RAF Phantom shot down a RAF Jaguar

Finger trouble with live weapons if I remember - Laarbruch or Gutersloh I think. Nice little end to the tale - Luftwaffe F-104 was just about to "bounce" the said Phantom when he saw the missile launched. He pulled up pretty quickly and said " The Brits are playing it for real!" No serious injuries luckily.........

[Farmer 1]

I must admit, you worry me a tadge.

You say you used to do it the other way round - OK, in this modern era, we must forget our old prejudices and let sleeping dogs leave the manger before the stable door is bolted.

But, dash it all, there are standards to be maintained. When you registered with PPRuNe, did you admit that you were actually a SIZE=1]Sun[/SIZE] Reader?

After scrutinising your post with a comb of the finest teeth going, I could not actually quite reach double figures in finding errors of spelling, grammar etc.

So whom, exactly, did you persuade to do the writing for you?

[BEagle]

Err, actually I got someone else to order the said calendar. There wasn't much to read in it - and the longest word was 'Samantha'!

[Barry Cuda]

and the longest word was 'Samantha'

Was "September" missing then?;)

[Farmer 1]

Sun, remember?

Probably called it Sep.

Who's this bloke Sam, anyway?

[ComJam]

Out of interest, how many airline pilots here have reviewed the Interception Procedures recently and is it something that gets attention at any time during your routine yearly training?

Cheers

[Charlie32]

Pretty sure its covered in one of those PPL Air Law MCQs about carrying interception procedures.
Always have one on board myself!!