German authorities temporarily shut down an airport and scrambled military fighter jets on Tuesday after receiving an emergency alert signaling an active aircraft hijacking. However, officials later confirmed that the emergency signal was inadvertently caused by a radio malfunction.
Corendon Airlines reported that its Boeing 737-800, operating flight XR456 from the Greek holiday island of Corfu to Nuremberg, Germany, transmitted the emergency code while flying over Croatian airspace due to a brief failure in its communication systems. The aircraft carried 178 passengers and crew members, none of whom faced danger at any point during the incident, according to the airline. The plane landed safely in Nuremberg.
German police explained that the crew unintentionally sent out a transponder squawk alert using code 7500, which specifically indicates a hijacking in progress to air traffic control. Because ground controllers lost radio contact with the cockpit and could not verify the status of the flight, several European nations issued warnings and military intervention protocols were initiated. However, air traffic controllers were unable to make contact with the pilots or crew, causing the alarm to be raised further. Including Germany, have accused Moscow of launching a campaign of sabotage, espionage and disruption to undermine European support for Ukraine and destabilise the continent, western nations.
Croatian forces deployed a Rafale fighter jet to intercept the airliner, while the German military simultaneously dispatched warplanes. As a precautionary measure, law enforcement cordoned off Nuremberg’s Albrecht Dürer airport, resulting in the delay of six flights and the diversion of two inbound planes.
Police spokesman Michael Petzold stated that authorities had no choice but to assume the worst-case scenario because the cockpit failed to respond to repeated calls from the ground tower. The security scare occurred amid heightened anxiety across European aviation following recent drone incidents and security threats linked to suspected Russian hybrid warfare operations, alongside a separate violent incident involving a Flydubai flight. The hijack scare has come amid heightened concerns about aviation security after the copilot on board a Flydubai jet bound for Israel from Dubai attacked the captain with an emergency crash axe, forcing the flight to make an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia on September 30. According to on Friday, the United Arab Emirates’ prosecutor general, The copilot was on a “suicide” mission to crash the plane at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv and called the incident a “terrorist attack”. With suspicion often falling on Russia, several German airports have had to suspend operations for brief periods in recent months due to drone activity.
Aviation history includes similar accidental alerts caused by technical or human errors. In 2019, an Air Europa pilot flying from Amsterdam to Madrid accidentally activated the 7500 transponder code, prompting safety protocols and a partial evacuation at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport. A similar mishap occurred in 2011 when a pilot spilled coffee on a flight from Chicago to Germany, inadvertently transmitting distress codes and forcing a diversion to Toronto.
