Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner loses radio contact gets intercepted by Italian Typhoons

A Boeing 787 was intercepted by the Italian Air Force after experiencing loss of radio contact with the Air Traffic Control

A Boeing 787 Dreamliner, flying between Delhi and Rome as Air India AIC123 flight was intercepted by two Italian Air Force Eurofighter Typhoon interceptors from Grosseto airbase on Oct. 16.

According to the Italian Air Force, the aircraft, registration VT-ANQ, lost radio contact with the Air Traffic Control agencies and entered the Italian airspace unauthorized. For this reason the QRA (Quick Reaction Alert) cell at Grosseto airbase was scrambled to intercept, identify and escort the liner, as done last month with a Lebanese A320 following a bomb threat.

The two F-2000A jets of the 4° Stormo (Wing) reached the B787 at 24,000 feet to the southeast of Rome. The Typhoons identified the civil plane and shadowed it from distance, not to be seen by passengers and once at 30 kilometers from destination, they were cleared to return to their base.

AIC123

Above, a screenshot from Flightradar24.com showing the route followed by the AIC123 flight.

 

About David Cenciotti
David Cenciotti is a journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of the world’s most famous and read military aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for major worldwide magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft, and many others, covering aviation, defense, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown several combat planes with different air forces. He is a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a graduate in Computer Engineering. He has written five books and contributed to many more ones.

4 Comments

  1. Doesn’t that $200 million plane have backup radios including HF? Can’t the pilots signal with their radar transponder? Couldn’t they fly in a holding pattern waiting for an escort? No, they go charging into Italian air space with no ATC. How did they even get cleared to land?

    Unless someone can come up with a good defense of this ‘blunder on’ behavior, Air India goes on my No Fly list.

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