Fighter jets escort Corendon flight to Nuremberg after hijack alert blamed on malfunction

Nuremberg, Germany. Two German fighter jets escorted a Corendon Airlines passenger aircraft travelling from Greece to Germany after a cockpit hijack signal on Tuesday. The aircraft reached Nuremberg safely, and the airline attributed the alert to a radio communications malfunction.

Hijack code triggered military response

German police said in a post on X that the cockpit had transmitted code 7500, which indicates a hijacking, and that radio contact with the pilot had become impossible. Several alarm responses were activated as a safety precaution, police said.

An air force spokesperson said two Eurofighters took off from Neuburg Air Base in southern Germany and escorted the passenger aircraft through to its landing.

According to the German air force’s website, Germany maintains two alert units, each equipped with two fighter aircraft, to investigate situations involving lost contact with civilian flight crews. Such communication failures occur roughly once or twice monthly.

Airline says nobody was in danger

The Boeing 737-800 had left Corfu, the Greek island, for its scheduled destination of Nuremberg Airport. Corendon, a leisure carrier based in Turkey, said the emergency signal was sent over Croatian airspace because of a short-lived fault affecting radio communications.

The airline said there had been no emergency and that passengers, crew members and the aircraft were never at risk. It added that monitoring began immediately, investigations were launched promptly and all required preparations were undertaken before the aircraft’s safe arrival at Nuremberg Airport.

Airport operations briefly halted

Nuremberg Airport said the incident required it to pause operations briefly, with flights subsequently resuming normally. A suspected drone sighting had also interrupted air traffic there during the night leading into Tuesday.

The alert occurred less than a month after a co-pilot on a flight travelling from Dubai to Israel attacked the pilot using an emergency crash axe. The prosecutor general of the United Arab Emirates described that incident as a terrorist attack.