jetairways flight 9w118 contact lost over Germany
 

According to Indian news agencies contact was briefly lost in German airspace and flight intercepted by German fighters.

WATCH: German fighter jets intercept Jet Airways flight after it loses contact with ATC : India, News - India Today

The video footage with above link looks quite credible.

Apparently filmed by a following BA flight.

More here:

http://avherald.com/h?article=4a51a0a5&opt=0

Very interesting video. A good sky for photography!

Could someone who knows about intercept procedures answer a couple of questions?

(1) The interceptor arrives beside the target but makes no manoevers to draw attention to himself. It's hard to tell the exact relative position but he seems to stay roughly abeam of the cockpit. Does he expect the target captain to look out sideways while in high-altitude cruise? Or it it left to passengers to tell CC to tell flight crew that there's a fighter alongside?

(2) The interceptor's wingman turns up two minutes later. Is this normal? I thought they normally fly together?

The Jet Airways crew were advised that an interception would take place, communication with ATC having already been re-established.

Jet Airways statement:

Contact between Jet Airways flight 9W 118, from Mumbai to London Heathrow, of February 16, 2017, and the local ATC, was briefly lost while flying over German airspace. Communication was safely restored within a few minutes. As a precaution, the German Air Force deployed its aircraft to ensure the safety of the flight and its guests. The flight with 330 guests and 15 crew subsequently landed at London without an incident.

Jet Airways has duly reported the matter to the concerned authorities including the DGCA. As part of the standard process, the flight crew of 9W 118 has been de-rostered pending investigation

I am wondering if the GAF will send the bill to Jet airways . I heard some States now do this as a matter of principle ( or at least claim they do ) in case loss of Comms or Navigation through restricted/prohibited airspace due to pilot error.

No, they won't.

The number two was always there, just out of shot behind the intercepted aircraft. Not much good being side by side if the intercepted aircraft decides to bank into them both.

More details on TTPs available here

Agreed, I would have thought it better to keep one on each side, even if one holds back some to see what develops.

TIO, your link doesn't seem to work for me.

Link that works In-Flight Intercept Procedures (archived copy so that link should always work)

Not sure that you're exactly correct there.
At about 1:26 an aircraft can be seen passing left to right at a lower altitude (about eight o'clock, sort of coming up through the clouds) and the BA crew man says "there's the other guy".
Looks like he may have climbed from a different location and performed a little circuit to come up from behind and join his mate.

Slightly off topic so please ignore me if you wish, but is there any reason why the contrails from the 2 engines appeared to be different colours? Could it just be the angle of the sun, or is there some mechanical explanation?

Great video. How far behind would the BA flight be positioned?

Good spot, I'd watched it without sound last night so missed that.

CurtainTwitcher, thank you.

Great video, guys. Nice one.

@Bull at a gate: The airliner's right contrail is partly in the shadow of the left one, hence the different colours.

Speaking of contrails, if you look closely when the first jet moves onto station, you can see distinct 'stepped' disturbances in its contrail as the flight controls are moved as he adjusts his lateral distance from the airliner, and then 'waggles his wings'.

Procedure is to come up along the captain side abeam the cockpit, or if no response move a bit forward. Normally it would be the F.O. who spots the intercepter first, as he his looking cross cockpit at his captain, who is most likely blabbing away, which is why the F.O. missed all those radio calls in the first place;)

If no response the interceptor has several partytricks to get the airliners attention.

Funny thing is that most ADF fighters like the F-16, CF-18 and so on, have their identification lamp on the left side of the nose, which will make them join up on the right side of the target aircraft at night. Sneaking in on a "non-talker" at night, they normally start talking once the ID lamp switch is set to on.

It is normal procedure to let the wingman stay 1-2NM behind in a good position for weapons employment, until the situation has been sorted out. If there is no issues other then comm loss, the wingman will move forward for a better view once cleared by his lead. Some leads will order their wingman to the other side so pax on both side can get a propper view.

Another reason for one of the interceptors showing up late might be a technical malfunction on scramble, forcing the pilot to abort the aircraft and run for the spare.

When intercepting an airliner for reasons like technical assistance (visual inspection of landing gear etc.) it is good habit to remind the captain, to inform the passangers that interceptors will be joining up close shorty, so as to avoid any panic among the passangers.

Interesting assumption..don't forget there's "together" as in close formation - AFAIK not used that much in the upper air, and then there's "together" as in the tactical 1-2 miles apart stuff, trail, abeam or what ever the fashion is/circumstances dictate on the day.. ..

Edit to add: F-16 guy beat me to it and is obviously prepared to put a bit more meat on the bones than I was.........and TBF there is open source stuff about this...but I'd add there used to be a saying in the fighter world that "it's the one you don't see that gets you"...nuff said from me.

Very interesting and spectacular video.

That being said what could be done concretely from a fighter ? I can imagine the very improbable case of the airliner being still flyable but having lost all NAV and COM. Extremely unlikely but ok... Past that there is the hijacking scenario. Assuming a positive identification of the situation can we seriously envision shooting down a fully loaded passenger aircraft over continental Europe? Given the probable time frame can we immagine, say, the Italian airforce shooting down an aircraft over Austria with the plane actually crashing in Hungary (just as an exemple to underline the massive mesh of overlaping sovereign airspaces)? I really hope we'll never have to find out...

In extremis and for the sake of public consumption I'd suggest the answer has to be yes...