Korean Air intercepted by German Fighters
 

A 744 cargo flight from Tel Aviv to Brussels was intercepted by fighter aircraft as it entered German airspace on the 7th February after it failed to respond to radio calls for an hour and 40 minutes. It crossed through four countries failing to respond to any radio calls. As it entered German airspace it was intercepted by military aircraft to ascertain it identity and dilemma. At some time thereafter it become 'operations normal' and landed normally.

I bet it was anything but operations normal for the crew after they saw the fighters.

Faces redder than kimchee??!!

1hr40. . . . phew, that is what I call a "power-nap" :rolleyes:

Secondary emphasis conceivably may focus on actual duty time and accumulated, multidirectional jet lag. :ooh:

1h40min.....hahahahaha.....hahahahaha

Kolean again:=, keep up the good airmanship chaps:ugh::ugh::ugh::ugh:

Not the first or last! PIA and VS come to mind!

i wonder how the fighter guys got the sleepy heads to wake up !? :8
or maybe they just woke up by themselves...?

and what would happen if u tried to "enter" into U.S. airspace like that?
:eek:

Korean and jet fighters... :suspect:

A TA or RA off the fighter jets would surely wake them up.

I wonder how this aircraft got through 4 airspaces of 4 countries before being intercepted:D. Somebody was sleepying on duty, and it probably wasn`t just aircrew:zzz::E

Densely packed countries in Europe- you could do four in the time it takes to eat breakfast! And Liechtenstein thrown in free. Just be glad the 'Russian' solution wasn't applied again- losing 3 to shoot down would stasrt seeming careless!

oh I bet the guard police were having fun .... the 121.5 tapes would be velly interesting :D

I remember that eicas (or whatever it is called) had an alert for that. Been a while since I flew the -400 but I thought there is a visual + aural alert if there is no buttonpushing (FMC or VHF) in a specified time. Anyone?

golfyankeesierra

B707 had all neccessary instruments and navigation equipment to operate Paris to Anchorage, but as we all know it doesn't help if it is Korean Air aircraft :ugh:

KE intercepted in Germany
 

This must have come as a shock to the Luftwaffe to have launch jets on a Saturday.

Presumably JG-74 at Neuburg with their shiny new Typhoons,or EF2000 as the German Air Force call them were called upon to do the honours.

Crew Alertness Monitor
 

GYS, it's called the Crew Alertness Monitor. Generates an EICAS advisory msg if you haven't touched any switches in a certain amount of time. I believe it is 20 mins. If you don't do anything after the EICAS msg, you get an aural warning to wake you up. First a beeper, then a siren for a wake up call.

So they can't have been alseep for all that time. Something else (not?) going on there.

Sleeping??
 

Guys,

Cut the crap about sleeping and such! Button touch monitors and such do not protect against missing calls by ATC over the radio.

The guys can well have been awake and busy, but have missed radio calls, that's all. Perhaps they have accidentally turned down a radio volume knob.
Could they have realized sooner that the radio was awfully quiet? I bet yes, but perhaps the flight was during a quiet period anyway - don't cargo's often fly opposite the busy time of pax operations?

Launching ready to fly airforce jets is standard practice to clarify such a situation, nothing that any airforce type will get nervous about. Man, how often doesn't it happen that some Cessna pilot does not properly file a flt plan and has to be intercepted for identification?

In short, don't make an elephant out of a mosquito.

Well
 

I missed several calls with a knob down on Com2. It happens.

Anyone can miss a radio call or two.

And then there's the 1+40 hr version. :uhoh:

Mariner, thanks; guess they weren't asleep.
EMIT, agree, but still 1hr40 min is a long long time.
Surprises me the jets weren't scrambled earlier; Helios comes to mind.

probably asleep......
 

I heard this on 121.50. The interceptors asked the crew to acknowledge by waving their hands out of the left cockpit window or rocking the wings - took a few calls by the interceptors to get a reply from the crew.

Damn! - it certainly woke us up and we were awake!!

Great circle route LLBG-EBBR has a 100nm stretch that goes through airspace of Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia and Austria in short order. About 12 minutes at cruise in a 744?

"If it's 13:17, this must be Slovenia."

Yeah...I agree with the comments regarding possible volume levels all turned down etc, etc.

But...are they not required to actually transmit something, like, to initiate a call!

I jest here, to much cynicism I guess!

Probably not,as usually transpoders are switched off approaching civil.

Mr Rotum (thread starter)....

What is your source?

Just interested.

And I would hazard a guess that if it were possible to compare whatever is the truth of what happened and why with all other similar incidents.......then the Koreans would barely be middle ranking. In our little world here in OZ I know personally (no it wasn't me!) of 2 incidents of over an hour where an a/c was out of comms. VH registered and flwon by Australians.

good info, Mariner! Just out of interest, what do you press thereafter to cancel the warning?

Absence of Comms
 

To EMIT and others who think that an absence of comms for 1+40 (or even 0+40) is no big deal (as in "let's not make an elephant out of a mosquito") I have news for you. From the ATC point of view (especially in busy, crowded airspace) it's a big deal.

I would suggest you visit such an ACC; sit, watch and listen for a bit. Then ponder what would be going on in terms of re-routing and re-clearing of altitudes to accomodate the a/c that is "not participating". ATC is much more of a dynamic endeavor than many realise (even high-time pilots); so the actions that must be taken significantly increase the workload, the inconvenience to other traffic, and indeed the stress level as -- despite ICAO and JAR -- one is never quite sure what the aircraft may do, and so allowance must be made for that.

Been there (at the ATC position) too many times.

Grizz

Anyone in Germany knowing of an investigation into this so we can get the facts confirmed (1h40 !!!)??

A rumour with a Pilot @ my firm states they were off for 14 Minutes and NOT1 Hour 40 Minutes or 1 Hour 14 Minutes!

This fitts well to the fact (ist it confirmed) that they crossed 4 countries southwest of Germany @ cruise-speed which would take approx. 20 Minutes.

I really doubt that they have been off for 1:40 Hrs without military interference until reaching Germany.

Crew Alertness monitor
 

MTBUR;

Reset the alarm with one of the Master WARNING/CAUTION Reset Switches on the glareshield.
Using any button or switch gets the time for the alertness monitor reset to zero.

Good feature for a long haul aircraft. I assume Hairbrush has a similar alarmclock.

But I doubt if this was the real problem here, could be just a blown up story. Hard to believe you can fly across Europe for that long without getting someone on the line.

Hi dear pilots,
may be this little data from my SBS-1 box can help:

a/c HL7602, B744 (freighter)
first occurenece: "06.02.2009 17:03:34"
last occurence: "06.02.2009 17:39:57"
call "KAL577" -if an 8 is added it would fit for KAL8577
first latitude"48.72482"
last latitude"50.55852"
first longitude"12.92182"
last longitude "6.55572"
first speed "448.8"
last speed "433.5"
first altitude "38000" feet
last altitude "29925" feet

A speed of 448 ktas over ground is around 830km/h..., 14min "off time" would make 194km. If the a/c would have heading northwest (TLV-BRU), so it might have crossed West Hugary, Nothern Slowenia, Austria and at least the estern part of Bavaria:E in that time. I have no record for an MIL a/c fitting to this altitude at that time.

Cheers Michael

Big deal
 

Grizz,

I am aware of the amount of uncertainty and workload that a non-responding crew is causing to ATC.

What I mainly attacked is the general assumption that the pilots must have been asleep. Certainly, like I stated, they could have sooner developed some suspicion that ATC was awfully quiet for a long time, but then, if you enter Serbian airspace from Bulgaria, at night you usually get a direct right to the Serbian Hungarian border, a long way to go without any other call necessary. Couple that with inadvertant turning down of the volume controls of the loudspeaker, weel, you can fill in the rest. Close to 30 minutes would be the stretch through Serbia, without any call necessary.

Out of interest - can you reduce volume in comm radio down to 0, or not? At my ATC unit, even if you turn the knob max left, it's still not 0, you will here transmissions - and there's also a light above the knob that turns on if there's an incomming tx in such cases, to alert you.

criss - volume can be reduced to zero, otherwise you'd have up to 5 radios broadcasting in the cockpit.

Routinuely monitor 121.5 but that gets turned down/off if it's interferring with monitoring the primary ATC radio.

Often the 'too quiet' to 'too loud' adjustment is very, very tiny. And from 'too quiet' to 'off' is also very small. It's not uncommon to see the other guy answering and you realize your volume has shifted to the point of being 'off'.

Thanks. BTW - we have 5-6 radios up at the same time in the tower cab:ok:

Don't know about the B747, but on the B757 not only can you turn the vol down to 0, you can deselect all three radios, and can also detune them - there are quite a few "gotcha's" to catch you out - hence when it's quite I always give a little click on the mic every 5 mins or so to check the speakers are still working, and if I've really not heard anything for a while, then request a radio check.

I managed to lose contact with London once due to me being inexperienced, and having a muppet moment - I now do everything I can to try not to repeat that heart stopping moment when I realised what I'd done - but it doesn't guarantee it wont happen again sadly!

DW.

The old adage about needing a pilot and a dog in automated aircraft springs to mind. Pilot to talk on wireless, monitor things and feed dog; dog to bite pilot if he tries to disconnect anything automatic.

Or falls asleep.

One teeny problem with that idea on a Korean aircraft though......

BEagle :ok:


Air Canine Rule Number 1. Stay clear of the Galley.

You might have 6 radio's in your atc cab, but you can't misstune
them to thousands of different frequencies at once.

Sure you can, and you can turn any frequency off too :)