Two Danish F16 fighter jets scrambled to intercept a Norwegian plane bound for Oslo Airport.
On Thursday evening, the Defense Command for Northern Jutland announced that two Danish F-16 fighter jets broke the sound barrier.
Two fighter jets from the Danish QRA in Skrydstrup took the sky when the airport authorities had reason to believe that there were problems on a civilian plane which was flying on a route west of Denmark towards Norway.
The Norwegian Boeing 737-800 (reg. LN-NOD) was performing flight #DY1741 from Barcelona to Oslo.
An alarm was erroneously triggered about a hijacking, but it was false alarm says operations manager Ronny Samuelsen. “There was an erroneously sent message about hijacking initiated by the aircraft, which was rectified immediately when the pilots discovered this.”
“It then goes to Norwegian’s operations centre, and then some routines are triggered which resulted in these fighter jets escorting the plane” says a statement.
Hijacking squawk code?
While Norwegian Armed Forces say the hijacking squawk code, data doesn’t show this.
The squawk code 7500 is used to indicate that the aircraft has been hijacked, and therefore requires urgent emergency support from both security services and air traffic control.
But according to data from RadarBox, the squawk code used by the pilots was 5510 since the departure from Barcelona, not 7500 at anytime. Then pilots switched to squawk 0472 on approach to the Danish Airspace until the landing in Oslo.