TAP Portugal jet intercepted over Ems estuary
 

Apparently this afternoon a TAP Portugal jet en route to Copenhagen has been intercepted by NATO fighters after several attempts at communication failed miserably.

De Volkskrant - Duitse straaljagers onderscheppen vliegtuig

Following the intercept, the airliner was allowed to proceed to its intended destination.

According to a spokesman at Eurocontrol, it is not clear what caused the 'communications breakdown': "Maybe the pilots had other things to do..."

This Dutch aviation news site reports that German F-16's did the intercept... :confused:

Anyone knows since when zeee German Luftwaffe operate the F-16? :}

Guess Danish F-16's would be more likely considering the destination of the TAP...

Could have been anywhere over Belgium, The Netherlands or Germany. Standard procedure if comms are lost. There are technical reasons which have been covered many times in these forums which can lead to inadvertant loss of comms. Not always a case of pilots sleeping. On the other hand, and I'm NOT saying that this was the case here, if you're flying through busy North European airspace and you hear nowt for more than 5 minutes, you should be asking yourself questions.

I hope the Eurocontrol quote is untrue. Quite pathetic if so.

fingertrouble could be an issue on the Bus. Welcome in the Club for the TAP pilots:)
Pilots sleeping -NO - IMHO just:mad:, poor idle talk only.
With its RMPs and ACPs, and additionally the not really practical "procedure" in some airlines which forces the CM2 as PNF to work on the RMP "like hell" just to get the SELECT light OFF:ugh: its easy to get "fingertrouble".
I guess this kind of "Fingertrouble" happened or will happen at least once to each Bus pilot, so that the frequency "dissapears" somewhere.
Learned from this, 121.5 is always open (as it should be) !!! And ACARS printer is always free, so you can see asap if any message is coming in. E.g. TAP OPS is sending an ACARS message, printed on the printer, but unfortunately the printer is covered, by something, book, newspaper:cool:, or anything else.
But I saw and still see houndreds of pilots, where 121.5 is just OFF.:ugh::ugh: So in case of the mentioned "fingertrouble" no chance for ATC or anybody else to call the "lost" guys.

They were F-4's, I saw them overflying my house , just south of Groningen. Found it strange to see a Airliner with 2 fighters close behind it.

What I don't understand why did the Germans intercept and not the Dutch QRA? They were allowed to cross all of Belgium & Holland before being intercepted, what if there was intent to do harm? Yes, I do realize they are small countries...

Doesn't mention zeee type there, just that they were german, which in that case, as has been mentioned earlier, makes them F-4.

The Luchtvaartnieuws article has been amended in the meantime. But they don't own up by adding a "last edit date/time" tag, as respectable newssites oughta do.

In fact I thought it amusing, the Volkskrant article and the Luchtvaartnieuws article were word for word identical except the Luchtvaartniews article specified the fighters as F-16's, while it is in fact well known ze Germans do not operate these.

Edgington !


I can only imagine that as the TAP a/c was heading in a E/NE direction, if
he was already near Groningen before EuroControl decided to send interceptors - then they are as near as dammit entering BRD airspace anyway, and the Germans could then probably carry on the escort as far as Luebeck or beyond with DK permission...... a short stint from Groningen by NL fighters would have seen them in BRD airspace rapidly anyway....

Just my theory - no inside knowledge ........

Sleeping Receivers?

AGC BN3 - Loss of Communication

and .........

'Sleeping' Receivers

A series of incidents has been reported where ATC was unable to contact an aircraft that had previously established two-way communication with the ground controller. In almost every case, satisfactory reception was only restored after a transmission from the affected aircraft. In these cases the aircrew have used the phrase, "receiver gone to sleep" or "suspected sleeping receiver" in their reports. The likelihood of a loss of separation and increased risk of collision arising from a prolonged loss of communication (PLOC) was highlighted by the UK Airprox Board in 1999 when two aircraft, on opposing tracks, were both "out of communication" for a period of 5 minutes. The Airprox report (150/99) mentioned that one of the operating companies had experienced several incidents when their aircraft radio was "neither receiving nor transmitting". The CAA is aware of more than 250 incidents of missed calls since 1999. CAA Air Traffic specialists led a team with representatives from NATS, EUROCONTROL, Thales and British Airways to investigate this issue and recommend actions to CAA to address 'sleeping receivers' causing prolonged loss of communication.

The investigation revealed that on a small but critical percentage of occasions, the aircraft communications transceiver failed to return from the transmitting to the receiving state. To mitigate this problem, one transceiver manufacturer has devised and published a non-mandatory service bulletin. The recent incorporation of this service bulletin into the ATC transceivers carried by a major UK airline has proved to be completely successful, but the CAA believes that this problem is very likely to be replicated in other transceivers. The CAA is now investigating whether high power ground transmitters at frequencies close to the civil and military aeronautical frequencies are likely to adversely affect the performance of an airborne receiver and if so, what measures are necessary to improve the immunity from strong signals and third order inter-modulation (IP3).

To progress this work the CAA will lead a team to investigate 'sleeping receivers' causing prolonged loss of communication (PLOC) between pilots and ATC.

Does anyone know what the TAP Jet was involved guessing an A319/A320/A321?

for that check:

Incident: TAP A320 over Belgium on Oct 18th 2009, intercepted losscomm

Airbus_a321

Don't know what you are on but can I have some ?:rolleyes:

Agreed - anybody translate It all sounds very difficult.

Misterredmist

A couple of weeks ago we went with school to Dutch Mil ATC, they proudly explaining that they respond extremely quickly to comm failures and intruders. Yet now it seems they did nothing?

Also they routing would take the A320 over or very close to every important Dutch city, so why only respond when they are about to fly over water?

I think Avman has it right. A quiet bit (more than a few minutes or so) on the RT over Northern Europe should be ringing alarm bells.

Common guys...

the top-guns need some practice, the politicians want to save their a****, and the taxpayers are used to be ripped off.

So, no problemo.

Ciao

The military don't move until civilian ATC established there might be something wrong, and tell them. I gather the fighters were dispatched promptly once the airforce command was informed.

Keep in mind that this was only a comms failure. The aircraft apparently didn't deviate from its established course and presumably the transponder continued operating normally as well. Had the aircraft been doing weird things, in all likelihood ATC would have alerted the military much sooner.

'Sleeping receiver' sounds the same as a stuck mike ?

No, a "sleeping receiver" is the First Officer about three hours into the third night Tenerife.

Actually, the opposite. In a stuck mike event, the problem is the transmission, whereas a sleeping receiver goes asleep by lack of transmission. I'm told that to revive it only a short transmission is enough. So when suspecting a sleeping transmitter just click your mike..