Two Hungarian fighter jets had to escort an Ahmedabad-London flight, after it lost contact with air traffic control for almost an hour last week, while flying over the east European country. The flight carrying 231 passengers and 18 crew later landed safely at London's Heathrow Airport.
The incident closely follows a similar scare, when the German Air Force had to send two fighter planes for a Jet Airways Mumbai-London flight on February 16. Last week's Air India flight scare may have been triggered by a communication failure as the AI pilots were surprised to spot the Hungarian fighter jets escorting their Dreamliner. They switched to a different frequency to speak to one of the Hungarian pilots, asking why their plane was being escorted. They were soon told that the fighter jets were scrambled as the plane had been "out of touch" for a while.
Despite the conversation, the Hungarian jets kept flying with the AI plane, and the pilots had to speak to the fighter pilot and told him the passengers were alarmed as they could see the jets, informed a highly placed source. It was only after this that the two jets flew away and the AI plane kept flying to London.
When contacted, a senior AI official said, "Our head of flight safety is investigating how the plane lost contact for somewhere between 45 minutes to an hour during which, given its speed, it would have flown over 600-800 km crossing over at least two EU nations." Spokesman GP Rao said, "The plane took off from Ahmedabad for London at 7 am Friday. It lost control with local ATC over Hungary for some time. The flight landed safely at London Heathrow at 11.06 am (all times local). The airline is conducting an inquiry into this."
