European fighter jets scramble to intercept El Al passenger plane

The Austrian fighters scrambled when air controllers could not reach the Tel Aviv-bound flight on radio.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

European fighter jets were scrambled to check on an El Al plane when air communications were briefly lost over Austria Monday, the Aviation Herald website reported Tuesday.

After taking off at 12:09 from Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Flight LY-338 reached its cruising altitude of 37,000 feet and headed to Tel Aviv. However, when air controllers in Rhein, Germany tried transferring their Israeli charge to their Austrian counterparts almost an hour later, the pilots of the commercial flight did not respond to the routine radio call acknowledging the handover.

Although flying normally, the cockpit remained silent during several attempts at contact on various frequencies, including the “guard” frequency, said the Herald. This is a very high frequency that is reserved exclusively for emergency communications and notifications, and it is recommended but not required that pilots constantly monitor it.

The plane also did not respond to calls by other aircraft in its vicinity.

The radio silence was enough to send out an alarm to a military base, even without any other indication of a problem, such as the pilots setting the aircraft’s transponder to the 7700, a code that automatically tells everyone in the vicinity that some kind of emergency has occurred.

The alarm was received at 1:08, said the Austrian Defense Ministry. Two of the country’s Eurofighters were sent to intercept the plane. Twelve minutes later, said the ministry, visual contact was made and radio contact was re-established.

The fighters went back to base and the plane went on to Tel Aviv with no other issues, landing routinely three hours later.

Neither El Al nor Israeli’s aviation authority has commented on the incident.