Fighter Jets Intercept British Airways Flight
May 1, 2016 – The security defenses of Hungary issued their highest level of alerts following a flight of Boeing 777 passing over its border unannounced and without any requests on Sunday afternoon. Two Gripens from Hungarian Air Forced were assigned to identify the aircraft which was en route from Dubai to Heathrow.
The air safety protocols clearly illustrate the requirement of gaining permission before anyone can pass from one country’s airspace to another. The request of the pilots for any action like this to happen is mandatory.
It has been reported that the Gripens took off at 12:55 PM before the BA flight made contact with the ground control. The jets had returned to their base at 13:21 PM. A spokesman from BA said: “Communication was quickly restored with air traffic controller and the flight without any obstruction landed at Heathrow safely.” But a little delay in communication or any miscommunication could create a situation of catastrophic destruction.
There have been several other similar incidents on commercial civilian flights which have unnoticeable triggered high level alerts. Sometimes these flights have been misidentified and shot down. In October, an airplane of Monarch Airlines flying from Madeira to Birmingham faced the fighter jets in close proximity to it as a security operation to intercept the flight in similar context of passing international airspace. But later on it was found that the plane missed to communicate the international airspace as it had lost its communication over French Airspace.
