OAL A340 military escort into STN ?
 

Rumours circulating about an OAL A340 being diverted into STN with presumably RAF escort ?

ETA STN 1450z.

Anyone know anything ?

What's OAL? Olympic of Greece? I recall a similar incident with one of their B732's into Lyon Satolas many years ago.

Hope all is OK with all on board and it't not another attempted hijacking.

Was the aircraft en route to USA?

Yeah, Olympic A340. Now on ground at STN. STN closed TFN !

No sign of any closure at STN, according to the live flight arrivals and departures on the BAA stansted site.

MoD confirms flight was escorted. Anyone got more on this?

On Sky News:

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0...153076,00.html

Jet2, arrivals & deps were closed whilst the A340 taxied in.
STN opened shortly after.
Thankfully they didn't park it outside the FLS hangar like the Ariana incident !

The aircraft took off normally at 12:30 local time as OA 411. Some 3 hours later a major greek paper received a warninig about the existence of a bomb abroad this flight.

So the captain decided to landed at STN.

Rwy in Sight

BBC News 1625


Security alert plane lands safely

RAF Tornados were scrambled

A plane has landed safely at Stansted Airport in what was believed to be a security alert.
An unspecified number of RAF planes were scrambled after Olympic Airways flight OA411 from Athens to New York asked to be diverted to Stansted.

It landed at 1529 GMT and the RAF planes have now returned to base after the incident was concluded 'safely', according to the MOD.

Essex police and fire services were in attendance at the airport.

'Full emergency conditions'

A spokesman for Stansted Airportsaid the plane landed under "full emergency conditions."

The BBC's Athens correspondent Richard Galpin told BBC News 24 the incident happened after an elderly man called a Greek newspaper anonymously and told them there was an bomb on board.

The paper called the police, who called the airline. No code word is believed to have been used.

The plane, which was carrying 290 passengers, landed safely.

The RAF is not releasing any more details of how many of its planes were involved for security reason.

So, had there been a bomb on board, what exactly would the RAF Tornadoes have done and what purpose was served in scrambling them?

I presume SOP is to scramble at the slightest sniff of suspision of anything untoward.

If a hijack event a la 9/11 takes place, then their ROE would quickly be changed from 'intercept, identify, report' to 'clear engage'.

However, they won't know until they actually intercept the target.

In this particular event, little was achieved from a military point of view, apart from a usefull exercise and good PR. Thankfully.

Aircraft originally wanted to go LHR!

Still at STN at 2100 local although flight plan continuing to JFK has been filed but this was many hours ago.

Apparently when the two F3s RTB Coningsby the runway condition was Black.
I think one of the BOBMF Spits had gone off the runway.
Hopefully nothing too serious and I don't think the F3s had to divert.

This incident lends a lot of credence to the thread Aircraft hijackings - the REALITY, I believe.
If not, why FOUR fighters?

(shell suit, big tash,scouse accent)...calm down calm down all you raf types. conningsby ...spits...condition black...yawn yawn.Two fighters earned their keep to show we are puppets of the yanks.end of.
scrap the lot of em

just a thought.. do they wait until the aircraft is over a ****ty part of town,or the country before they fox one it or is there a sort of hijack etiquette NIMBY (not in my back yard syndrome ) type attitude at play here.after all we couldnt have the inbred windsors getting hurt could we might clear up the gene pool too much, oh and liberate some national assets from the german/greek dynasty that has hijacked this once proud land .etc etc..

Good job cat stevens want on board...get a grip.

time to deletion by a mod...less than 4 hours.

My God Bigdick, what have you been smoking:confused: :confused:

Happened to be on stand at time when the OAL A340 landed in STN and there were some interesting exchanges between ATC and the A340.

THe crew of the A340 were continually asking how long the fire engines were going to be? This went on for about 15 minutes. Crew sounded very agitated as you would expect considering the crew told ATC they had given 50 mins notice of arrival.

ATC explanation "local airport problem"

Next question from crew was how many sets of steps were coming to aircraft. The answer from ATC was 1(one) which resulted in a curt response of "well done England" from OAL crew.

One set for 290 pax!! Think they blew some slides in the end.

Was parked on other side of airport so didnt have a first hand view but it sounded like a farce listening on radio.

Hope for all our sakes there was a master plan in place and I didnt have the big picture but it sure as hell didnt sound like it.

any news on its departure again?

Athens airport is inherently safe but with all the additional security measures lately, there couldn't have been anything untoward placed on anything that remotely resembles an aircraft or on anything else within a radius of 100nm for that matter :zzz:

According to the Athenian News Agency, the ac departed around 0800Z for KJFK following an allnight search of luggage and airplane. Passengers stayed in nearby hotels. (What's the nightlife like in the area?) It was also reported that the ac diverted to STN on instruction from the authorities as STN was "better trained and equipped" to handle cases such as this one :ugh: :confused:

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Better trained and equipped? Not according to OAL crew. Nightlife at Stanstead=ZILCH!