Jet Has Military Escort After 'Misunderstanding'

Jet Has Military Escort After ‘Misunderstanding’ :

Two F-16 fighter jets escorted a US Airways jet to Baltimore-Washington International Airport yesterday after a “misunderstanding” between the pilot and air traffic controllers over whether the plane had been hijacked, airline and airport officials said.

US Airways spokesman David Castelveter would not comment on what the pilot said that caused air traffic controllers concern, saying that to do so would reveal airline security procedures.

“It was a misunderstanding by the controllers over what our pilot in the cockpit said,” Castelveter said. “They were worried about a potential security threat.”

Flight 1814 had left Charlotte shortly after 8 a.m. with 44 passengers and was scheduled to land at BWI about 9:35 a.m. At 9:12 a.m., the two F-16s were launched from Andrews Air Force Base and intercepted the airliner in “very short order,” said Air Force Maj. Ed Thomas, a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command in Colorado.

The fighter jets, armed with air-to-air missiles, escorted the US Airways jet to BWI. He said the F-16s flew within visual range of the jet, but not in a manner that would have forced it to change course. The F-16 pilots observed no unusual actions on the part of the commercial jet, Thomas said.

As a precaution, two more F-16s from Langley Air Force Base in Hampton Roads were scrambled and sent to Washington to fly combat air patrol over the nation’s capital until the situation was resolved, Thomas said.

Barry Maddox, a spokesman for the FBI’s Baltimore field office, said the Maryland Transportation Authority Police, who are responsible for security at BWI, notified the FBI of a problem shortly after 9 a.m. Police quickly determined that a hijacking was unlikely but investigated anyway, Maddox said.

“There was an indication that it had been a false alarm, but we still responded and proceeded as if it was an active case for investigation until we were clear it wasn’t,” Maddox said.

The flight landed five minutes early and was directed to a remote taxiway behind the airport fire station, Castelveter and an airport spokeswoman said. It took about an hour for agents from the FBI and the Transportation Security Administration to board the plane, speak with the crew and passengers and clear it to proceed to the gate, Castelveter said.

No other BWI flights were affected, an airport spokeswoman said.

“It was nothing extraordinary,” said NORAD’s Thomas. Since Sept. 11, NORAD has responded to more than 400 Federal Aviation Administration requests to intercept aircraft, often small planes that did not respond to radio calls or otherwise drew attention.

“This scramble was routine,” said Brig. Gen. David Wherley Jr., commander of the D.C. Air National Guard’s 113th Wing. “Obviously, the fact that it was an airliner made it more newsworthy.”

Jets can be scrambled for a variety of reasons, including cases in which aircraft do not respond to radio calls, passengers are unruly or otherwise of concern to flight crews, or transponders mistakenly transmit distress calls, Thomas said.

“The vast majority of the cases are resolved without incident,” he said.

Thomas said he did not have figures for the number of times military jets have intercepted commercial airliners since Sept. 11.

“It’s a fair number,” he said. “I wouldn’t say it’s frequent, but it’s not unusual by any stretch.”
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link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4592-2002Aug27.html