F-16 intercept unidentified 737 over the Netherlands : will pilots be reprimanded ?
 

This morning being Coordinating controller at Maastricht we had a flight on screen, but no radio contact. So the Dutch air Defence launched 2 F16's to intercept... after a while ( because the crew didn't have 121,5 selected on com2 ) we had him back on the frequency and all was well.
Now, we believe the Dutch authorities forward the bill to the company, so I can imagine they are not happy about that. So, how does your company deal with events like this ? Will the pilot be reprimanded for it, or will he just have to explain his side of the story, and that's the end of it ?
In short...can the pilots reading this post on how their company would deal with a situation like this towards the crew.
Thank you,
OT :ok:

F-16 intercept unidentified 737 over the Netherlands
 

"xxxxx flight xxx.......,xxxx center, please respond.........." :eek:

Looks like this is a press statement that is frequently issued, with only source and destination changed?

Happened on January 18th to a 737 Berlin to Amsterdam.

Happened again on February 17th to a 737 Malaga to Oslow.

RC

Why does this happen so often?
 

I am a little curious what causes a prolonged loss of radio contact between the airliners and ATC. From my mil experience, if I don't gain contact upon frequency change, I'll just switch back to the previous one and tell them. That usually solves the problem. Also, is everyone continuously listening out on 121.5?

Yupp, I hope everyone got 121.5 up on #2 !?!?

There are many reasons you may have a loss of radio contact.... how about you were transferred to from Rhine to Maastricht and get radio contact. 15 minutes later the controller forgets to hand you over to the next sector, and 20 minutes later you are about to enter UK airspace and so request descent. No answer - you've gone out of radio range from the radar controller (but you can still hear everything).

Alternatively on getting radio contact with the next sector your radio "goes to sleep" - ie the release of the transmit switch failed to bring the receiver back so all is now quiet, you hear nothing until you realise it might be a problem.

A third one - during a physiological break a pilot forgets to to tell the other who they are talking to, and it gets left on the previous frequency - the controller has handed him over and the Maastricht controller is trying to raise the aircraft but they are not listening.

121.5 is good, but there are other things to listen/talk to - ATIS, maintenance, ramp handling. Plus when you get near UK airspace it gets a bit tedious listening to Practice Pan etc.

As I said - there are a multitude of reasons - I'm sure you can think of some yourself.
Safe flying

My company's flight safety department would start an investigation to find the cause of the incident.
When all the facts are on the table they will present their report to parties concerned.
Maybe after the report the crew is invited for tea and biscuits by their superior maybe not.

Spuis

the reason this happened is that pilots screw up and quite frankly aren't as professional as one would hope.

early on as a copilot I flew with a captain who was more interested in reading a golf magazine than monitoring the radio. He even said, "if it seems I don't care, its because I don't!)

I asked the captain twice to get us a descent and he told me to shut up and atc would tell us what they wanted.

finally I did a radio check and found out that we were not talking to the right controller. I switched over and requested the descent while the captain was trying to figure out where the hell we were ( complete loss of situational awareness on his part!)

I reported him to our chief pilot who called said captain in and offered to accept his retirement on the spot, confronting him with paperwork ready to be signed. The captain retired on the spot.



Don't think for a moment somthing equally unprofessional didn't happen in this case.

I can imagine charts in europe show ATC boundries just like here in the US...if you aren't on alert and vigilant in the cockpit, you might as well not be there!

jon

Unfortunately this happens too often. Now SOP to launch the fighters, ICAO recommended practice, IFIRC.
Caused some consternation in the Netherlands as people are not used to the military being active on weekends, esp. not going supersonic.
Capt Sly - the way the system runs at Maastricht, the controller "assumes" the aircraft, making the data block on his display brighter. The traffic levels there ensure that a request will quickly be made to the previous sector to transfer the aircraft.
If you should get through the system without talking to ATC but can contact other aircraft ask them to relay for you.
The Sector Supervisor at Maastricht is required to inform the Military Sup. of any aircraft in R/F. This info is passed to Air Defence, who make the decision to launch the QEA flight.
During the Cold War we could tell if the flight was armed as it was displayed as a Hot Scramble (a discrete Mode A code was used by these flights) I'm not sure if that is still the case. There was an intercept of a Delta 767 last year ago over the North Sea where a spotter had put the R/T between the interceptors and Dutch Mil on the net (link here), rather frightening as one of the calls was "weapons safe".
I agree about the nuisance calls on 121.5 being a pain. Is there no concept of a "regional guard" freq. in the UK? There was (is?) one in the Netherlands, a common tower freq. monitored by all the bases, can't remember ever hearing a practice Pan on it though, must be a UK thing. However I would think that the sudden appearance of a couple of interceptors just outside the cockpit would merit a very quick call on 121.5, or even 243 (FWIW one of the previous intercepts was made on a USAF Nightingale a/c:uhoh:)

We listen on 121.5 on box 2 when we aren't using it for weather,company calls etc. We also have the FIR bdy estimates on the PLOG so we have an idea of the elapsed time for a change of control centre and we have the airway chart available showing sector boundaries and frequencies.

Was there an 8.33khz frequency involved? On many earlier 8.33 capable radios the crew must remember to physically switch to/from 8.33 khz to/from 25 khz spacing, otherwise when you think you select (say) 119.775 you actually select 119.770.

Hello Jon,

Where you there? This is a pretty strong accusation you make here. As far as I understand based upon one situation you encountered in your flying carreer.

As mentioned by someone else in a previous post .... there can be various reasons for this to happen. I agree that a pilot should be sure there is two way radio communication. But sometimes things go wrong. Maybe beacause both pilots were reading a golf magazine, or the playboy, or the .... The exact reason in this case I don't know. Do you?

Get my point?

Happy flying.

It seems that this is a continuing problem in Europe where air carrier type of aircraft lose contact with ATC and then the fighters are launched. (In one case a Spanish carrier flight from Norway to Spain had 3 sets of fighters launched after it). What is being overlooked is that most carriers in Europe do not have flight monitoring/flight watch systems where Flight Dispatchers/Flight Operations Officers are responsible to watch the flights and have their own communication system with the flight while it is enroute, and can tell ATC who and where they are independently of ATC, before any interceptors are launched. In that case all it would take is a phone call from ATC to the carrier to verify who it is or what is happening and then the crew could be notified independently by the flight dispatcher to contact ATC.
In the US this interception thing is extremely rare as all US carriers are required to have this system. Most intercepts there are either for gen av aircraft unidentified or off course in restricted areas or in the unusual case, an intercept of a foreign carrier for various reasons. But with US domestic carriers, it is simply a question of a phone call to the carrier, then an ACARS message or radio call to the crew by the dispatcher, and back to ATC they go. (I have done this myself on several occasions, when ATC lost contact). And the crew's career is not generally jeapardized by this either as it is a quick system to resolve the problem before it becomes serious. But if you don't have the system and are relying on just the ATC radio, then you get the fighters.
It also brings to mind the recent case of the Vietnam Airlines B777 which was threatened with being shot down, also over Europe (but not a European carrier, of course). But it shows again that a flight monitoring system is a very good thing to have. Unfortunately many carriers do not have them and in many cases they don't even know for sure where their flights are, as they have no one assigned to track them. Not good, as they also miss a lot of important operatational data (such as severe weather, facilities problems, alternates closing, ATC issues) getting to the crews by not having them.

I'm not so sure that nobody has this system in place...I remember my supervisor give Spanair Ops a call to inform them that we did not have contact with one of their flights, and that fighters would be scrambled soon...

The Spanish were rather quick in contacting the crew to tell them to call us. Of course, this is in case we have the phone number of the operator ( some flightplans contain the phone number in the Remarks-field ( Field 18 ? ) ). But not all do.

We also try to ask a company ship on the same freq. to use the company freq. to contact the lost-in-space aircraft, or via ACARS. In this case it was the only HMS-flight in the area, so therefore air defense was warned in the way that Lon More described ( Hi there, Lon...:) )

The problem is not one of knowing who they are and where they are. ATC already know that. Flight data and identification are transferred by ATC agencies ahead of the passage of the aircraft What they don't have is communication. What they don't know is if this is for an innocent reason, or whether some illegal interference is taking place. What the authorities don't have is time on their side if it is the latter. Hence the relatively quick escalation to air defence measures whilst all the other avenues to contact the aircraft are also being attempted.

In the UK, we have the telephone numbers of the Ops people at the majority of the carriers operating in the airspace. For most of those, the Ops guys can get in touch with the crew via ACARS or other means. That's not a US carrier specific thing, but covers the majors in Europe and the rest of the world as well :ok:. For smaller operators (or even US GA or corporate flights), there is often no way to get in touch via Ops, or even a number for their Ops Department (if they have one). So it's back to the old techniques of radio relays, calls on 'guard', or sending up the fighters :ouch:

PS it's not always the pilots fault. ATC can also sometimes be to blame by letting the aircraft get out of radio range and forgetting to transfer in a timely manner :}

of course it is not always the pilot's fault.

BUT.

In this crazy world of flying, the last defense against a foul up is an alert and well trained crew.

If you are just sitting in the cockpit, "fat, dumb, and happy" chances are you have missed something.

If your tire falls off on takeoff, maybe you didn't do a thorough enough pre-flight inspection.

If you lose radio contact, maybe you have not "maintained a proper listening watch" on your radio. Perhaps you are too busy flirting with the f/a's who come to the cockpit to rest their feet.

While a loss of radio com from ATC might happen on your first flight into an unknown area. If you are on the same route for the umpteenth time in the last year, you begin to anticipate radio frequency changes.

ALL you have to do is say: "Blank center, Air Widget 23, RADIO CHECK please".

This will wake up a controller who forgot, it will check your radio, and your fellow pilots will notice if ATC doesn't answer and they will confirm your transmitter is transmitting.


Sorry boys and girls. If you are tired, not alert, or bored with flying and "zoned out", it is time to fix things.

Many years ago, when I was first learning to fly, there were 3 incidents in the state of california in which planes crashed into mountains while "IMC". ATC foul ups for two of them. Over expectations of ATC service was the third.

It all comes down to the pilot. Aviate, Navigate, Communicate. We have more tools than ever before, but the enemy is complacency. And it is this that is growing as a problem!

No radio, use your transponder. At least the F16's will try to signal you before blasting you!

jon

jondc9:

This is typical of your soundbite style of posting.

This is a professional pilots forum.

Many years ago, when I was learning to fly ;) I was taught that the pilot is always responsible for terrain clearance.

Also: As has been patiently explained above, you may not know that you have 'lost contact'

So your transponder, which ATC are using to see you, is irrelevant, is it not?

That was an Air Europa flight that didn't make a single transmission from Copenhaguen UIR to mid-France, with scrambles in Holland, Belgium and France.

Back to Oscar Tango initial question, there was an internal investigation but the crew were not suspended. I'm not sure the company ever got billed for the damage.

Resign on the spot
 

Jon, I hope you feel good about the report to the Chief-Pilot. If you would get the man to listen to you then he would get your concern and he would change his attitude. You can make him listen, it is part of our job that we take comments from everybody and make something out of it. It is not important who is right, important is what is right at the moment. Later, on the gorund after you landed and the door is still closed you can bring the matter up again and it would be showing a good way of "be a man" and talk it over. I know you did the right thing and you intention was good and safe as well to be alert. In behalf of everybody around and under your flightpath I will thank you for the awareness you have had. A report to the Chief-Pilot is the last you may need in your career, maybe the grace of somebody else will help you out one day. We are not single in the Cockpit, we are now two and in the good old days we where three who make the good thing happen and come back to the ground safe and sound. Allways safe skies and happy landings for you and all the Woman and Man who try to do the best every day and night 24/7......

Fly safe and land happy

NG

Lost Comm
 

Jon, you DC9 Guy, I gotta hand it to ya!

EVERY time you lead with your chin, there is SOMEONE willing to connect!

It doesn't matter that you are right. Nope. It don't matter that you point out the obvious. Nope.

You are a BAD MAN! You point out the things we don't wan't to admit and for that you are DAMNED!!!! Damned to HECK I tell you!!!

Next Squadron Party, I'm buying you a beer.

EOR

PB