INTERCEPTION One member learns a life lesson By a BALPA member It happened nearly a decade ago but somehow the legend refuses to die, despite other scrapes and very occasional successes with which I have found myself involved since. In some respects, it continues to be deeply embarrassing, but it was a unique experience that hopefully few others will find themselves in, with lessons well learned and, if nothing else, a half-decent talking point during long flights home from Greece. Id like to admit that it was simply egregious incompetence that brought me into the situation and it would be disingenuous to deny it too keenly, but like all aviation events, the many cheese holes necessary to find oneself uncomfortably accompanied by the LArme de Lair at FL360, lined up perfectly. On the basis of my own experience both before the event and after, I imagine most pilots will recognise facets of the day and acknowledge that put together as it was, the situation could have happened to any of us. Reporting for duty in the wee hours to be greeted with an aircrafts tech log populated with several head-scratching issues is never a great start to the day. The other pilot admitting his sleep patterns had been suboptimal the previous night didnt help either, or the fact that the duty concerned was yet another long four-sector day nestled uncomfortably among many similar days with which the modern pilot has to cope. In short, these minor complaints were a suitable and vital amuse-bouche to the main course carnage up ahead some of the items in the tech log were contributors to the situation in which we eventually found ourselves. Setting off We set off to our destination behind schedule and throughout the flight through France, the 121.5 Guard frequency was awash with radio calls, both appropriate and inappropriate, in all kinds of languages. The emergency frequency is usually quiet and rarely intervenes with the primary, but on that day for some reason it was exceedingly busy. Concerned that Id miss a radio call on the main frequency I turned the volume of 121.5 down, and then off completely. First mistake. I tried restoring it as we flew towards our top of descent point but with no real improvement and, in the knowledge that I was about to change to the airports amusingly idiosyncratic approach frequencies, I elected to keep the volume on 121.5 off. Two other technical faults played significant and unusual parts. The aircraft was equipped with both ACARS and CPDLC, neither of which were functioning properly on the day. The former was not receiving and transmitting messages properly a problem Ive never had since. As an example, wed sent a message to Ops about PRM passengers and had an odd reply (essentially telling us the read receipts were unclear to Ops). To compound the problem, on the ground Id phoned Ops to be told the system wasnt dispatching messages properly and marking them as received despite this not being the case. CPDLC back then was particularly prone to drop-outs and other spurious failures and could not to be trusted. Both services could have helped in our later time of need had they functioned normally. The odds of both not working at the same time were nonetheless extremely small. The turnaround was, from memory, uneventful but for whatever reason, during our pre-flight checks I forgot to reset the Box 2 volume. Second mistake. I could blame the business of a low-cost airline turnaround, but in reality, I simply didnt check the aeroplane properly before flight. Once airborne, ATC cleared us all the way up to our cruising altitude at FL360 and sent us to a waypoint just over the mountains, at which point wed usually expect to be handed over to the next FIR controller. Sure enough, the call came on schedule. The new frequency was read back with no correction and flip-flopped over only to encounter a very busy frequency with much French language involved. Cest la vie. I relaxed slightly because we were at our cruising level and on our filed flight path at some point space would occur between transmissions where the other pilot (it was my sector flying) could get a word in edgeways or the controller would finally notice a little bug traversing the radar screen unsupervised and contact us directly, and the worst case would be someone assuming wed had a comms failure Just then, the Cabin Manager came into the flight deck with coffee and more food, which was much appreciated it was an early duty and normally by now I was in desperate need of my caffeine mainline being replaced. As usual, she stayed for several minutes to chat, and when she eventually left, the other pilot asked me if I minded him taking some controlled rest. I couldnt think of any staggeringly good reason why not so I acquiesced without mentally checking what extra roles (ie. the radio) I would be taking on in his absence. Third mistake. Early check in On we chugged up through France on our pre-planned route. I completely forgot that wed failed to check-in earlier, with sporadic French and English still blurting in the background, and got stuck into the newspaper in order to avoid myself falling asleep too. About 40 minutes later I looked at the nav display and noticed that our to waypoint was a VOR, always on our official routes in that part of the world back then, but somewhere rarely visited as shortcuts were commonly allowed. My brain alerted itself to the waypoint as something didnt stack up, all too quickly followed by the inevitable oh shit the radio was awfully quiet I glanced down at the selector panel, reminding myself that Box 2 was still muted. Forlornly, with an awareness that it would be a pointless attempt, I tried making a radio call on Box 1, still tuned to the frequency directed to previously and once carrying non-stop transmissions. Not so much now! No one answered so I tried again. Definition of madness, but why not? Realising that I needed to take positive action, I tentatively turned the volume up on Box 2 to listen in to 121.5 only to be greeted by an excited cacophony of French controllers frantically trying to make contact with us or asking other aircraft to try. The message was that should anyone make contact with us, we were to call Brest control on a specific frequency. Feeling that my somewhat belated acknowledgement might not be the best use of my time, and being now enormously embarrassed, I hastily dialled up the required Brest frequency on Box 1 and gamely checked in as if nothing had happened. The reply was understated and laconic ah, good to talk to you, weve been trying to make contact, descend to FL300. To say I was surprised at the briskness and contentment of the controllers instructions would be an understatement, but I wasnt going to pour petrol on the fire. I simply apologised and read back the instructions, and nothing further was said. Phew. Ive watched Top Gun and Hotshots enough times to know that in situations like this, whose instructions are to be prioritised... Thinking that it was about time someone else should share my neartrauma, I poked the other pilot awake, and when he was conscious, I told him the story. He seemed rather non-plussed that Id disturbed his rest for such a trivial reason but just then the aeroplane rocked from side to side in otherwise clear air. And there was me thinking wed managed to get away with it. Suspecting what was about to greet me, I turned away from the other pilot and grudgingly looked out of the window. There, in all its pseudoglory was a knock-off Eurofighter (aka Dassault Rafael) armed to the teeth and flying close enough for me to count the onions in the cockpit. Bollocks. I used many, many swear words but, once Id regained a modicum of composure, I asked the other pilot to I asked him to speak with the other aircraft on 121.5 while I spoke to Brest as we were now beyond our top of descent point and were in danger of missing the level restriction. Brest Control were somewhat surprised - we didnt authorise the interception, almost immediately followed by will you make the descent restriction? I checked with the other pilot who confirmed that Monsieur de Harbinger de Death next door wanted us to maintain level flight and not try anything funny. Ive watched Top Gun and Hotshots enough times to know that in situations like this whose instructions are to be prioritised, so I reverted to Brest explaining that I wasnt descending any time soon because the fighter had more guns than he did, and in fact we were to match the Rafaels course, altitude and speed. Consternation ensued but I wasnt in any position to negotiate. Shortly after, the Cabin Manager rang and airily asked whether I was aware of the other aeroplane with pointy things under the wings on the left-hand side. Not sure whether this was a genuine question, or simply confirming the Cabin Managers opinion of my intelligence, I acknowledged and said Id speak with the passengers once I was reasonably certain we werent going to visit the water near Jersey in a fiery bellyflop. This seemed to satisfy her, perhaps a little too easily, so I wondered if she was now going to tell anyone whod listen in the cabin that this was completely normal and that this happens to the Captain all the time. At that point, Pierre de Mort Instantane banked sharply away pulling up rather keenly at the same time. Thinking him a bit of a show-off (yes, yes, youre very clever, but how do I make the Airbus do that sort of manoeuvre without turning off all of the protections and perhaps now isnt the best time to switch off the ADRs). Instead, I spoke again to Brest, told the now apoplectic man that I would start descending and would do my best with FL300 by the assigned point. He calmed down almost immediately and handed me over to London. London was far less phlegmatic, telling me rather too enthusiastically that Eurofighters from Conningsby had been minutes from launch, and we should expect a conversation with the police on the ground. I think I was probably well past the point of moral high-ground and therefore unable to accuse the controller of patronisation, so I verbally hung my head and continued with the descent. Once established, I handed the radio to the other pilot clearly worried that this would be his last ever flight so early in his career and tried my best to explain myself to the passengers. I told them (mostly) the truth that wed had a radio failure and the standard procedure was for a fighter to come up and check that we were OK. As we were fine, hed left, and we were carrying on with our flight home. Heading home We landed without any further ado, and as we parked up, several police officers in hi-vis jackets were waiting on the ramp. There were surprisingly few comments from the passengers leaving the plane, other than the occasional did you get lost?, were those real missiles?, and does this really happen to you all of the time?. I answered them with define lost, theyre French, what do you think, and no, Im a virgin. Social and mainstream media was thankfully quite quiet after the event too even then I suspect you only broke through the miasma of Twitter if you get escorted to the ground by fighters who rattle Marjories windows in the process. The police wanted to know what had happened, but once Id started bleating out endless acronyms they were largely put off and clearly wanted to go home just as much as I did. We were all stood down from the rest of the duty, cabin crew included. The latter thought we were heroes for engineering an unexpectedly early finish; the other pilot and I went home expecting a beating. However, whether it was essentially an operational non-event, whether there was little reputational damage to the airline, and/or whether there was a realisation that actually lessons had to be learned by several different parties within our airline (including the flight crew), or possibly because several of my friends in the company higher up the food chain were working very hard to save my sorry behind, we were well looked after and returned to work within a few days. Or perhaps it was because even in November we were short of crew