Passenger plane flies over Live -Fire Chinese Navy -Exercise -Jalopnik

The last thing you want to see out of the window during the middle of your flight is a frigate of a foreign navy that fires its weapons. Unfortunately, this was the case for the passengers on a Virgin Australia flight from Sydney to Queenstown, new -Zeeland in February. The Boeing 737 had unintentionally flown near three Chinese warships in the Tasman Sea, an incident that gave rise to controversy because the Australian army did not know that the Chinese navy ships had only 300 nautical kilometers of the east coast of the country.

The audio recording of the conversation between the cockpit crew and air traffic control was recently released under the legislation on information about freedom of information and the incident sounded as if it had been torn from the pages of a novel by Tom Clancy. The audio obtained by nine news A pilot in Virgin Australia contained contact with ATC to ask: “We have just had a warning from a Chinese Navy Task Force that they do a live shooting exercise … Is anyone informed of this?” The controller confirmed that they have not received a warning, but there was only an exclusion radius of 10 miles. Then, in a moment of gloomy humor, the pilot said, “So if we are missing, you know what happened, hey?” The controller replied: “Good luck.”

The incident with Virgin Australia Flight 161 took place during a one -month trip in Australia. The Navy of the Volkverhijdenverghe has never officially stated why it has used a cruiser, a frigate and a supply ship to be lurking around the territory waters of another country. According to The New York TimesThe small fleet of the PLAmarine stuck in and out of the exclusive economic zone of Australia, which extends from 200 naemies of the coast. It was probably geopolitical attitude because the journey coincided with the best admiral of the American navy in the Pacific Ocean that Australia visited.

While the Virgin Australia plane landed safely in New Zealand, it is already worried to see passenger airlines in the middle of a military confrontation. Commercial planes can often be shot due to a lack of operational judgment. Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot over Ukraine in 2014 by pro-Russian rebels, killing all 298 people on board. A Dutch-led multinational study showed that the surface-to-air rocket was built and supplied by Russia. A Dutch court tried three men in absence for mass murder and the downing of an airplane. The judges sentenced them to life in prison, but noticed that they were planning to shoot a military plane.