LONDON – Yesterday, an easyJet flight bound for Mahon was intercepted by fighter jets, which later turned out to be a false alarm.
Video footage posted by @FlightEmergency on Twitter below shows the fighter jet in question near the wings of the aircraft.
The fighter jets in question belong to the Spanish Air Force and were F/A-18 fighter jets.
It is unclear which flight in question it may have been, but from deductions with the fact that the Airbus aircraft had no sharklets as well as data from RadarBox.com, the following flights could have been the one intercepted on that day:
- U21849 from Manchester – Landed at 20:38 local time.
- U28303 from London Gatwick – Landed at 1653 local time.
- U28301 from London Gatwick – Landed at 1000 local time.
- U24367 from Lyon – Landed at 0914 local time.
- U23785 from Paris CDG – Landed at 0857 local time.
- U22986 from Milan Malpensa – Landed at 0850 local time.
- EJU17EZ from Paris CDG – Landed at 1604 local time.
Unconfirmed reports suggest that it may have been one of the Gatwick flights listed above, as the flight had a squawk code that was close to an emergency issue.
Apparently, there was a communication issue between Spain and London Gatwick which caused the F/A-18s to be scrambled.
This is a developing story.
