British Mediterranean Airways flight intercepted over the Netherlands
 

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.

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.

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 ???

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!

<<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.

Oh my goodness - not again.

How many more times will this happen @ BMed?

Full details here 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?

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

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"

For non Dutch speakers I summarised it briefly.

Jeeeeeezuuuuus, the stupidity of the man!

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/babel...D8727&lp=nl_en

:E

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

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"

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

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

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) :)

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

STH

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

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 .....

<<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.

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.