Virgin Airlines pilot first alerted authorities to Chinese live fire danger on Friday

Australian aviation officials revealed that they first learned of China's possible "live-fire" military exercises in the Tasman Sea last week after a Virgin Australia pilot relayed a warning he received mid-flight via an emergency radio frequency. The information indicated that the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy (PLA-N) would be conducting dangerous exercises in busy international airspace.

Australian Air Services representatives stated at a parliamentary hearing that nearly 50 flights were forced to reroute last Friday due to signals from the PLA-N indicating it would conduct dangerous exercises in busy international airspace. Under questioning from opposition senators, Rob Sharp, CEO of Airservices Australia, the state-owned enterprise responsible for managing air traffic, confirmed that the agency became aware of the danger to aircraft at 9:58 AM Canberra time last Friday.

Mr. Sharp said, "Effectively, a Virgin Australia aircraft advised one of our air traffic controllers that a foreign naval vessel was broadcasting that they were conducting live firing exercises 300 nautical miles east of our coast." He added, "At 10:00 AM, our air traffic control center initiated what we call a 'hazard alert,' basically alerting all flights in the area that there was a hazard, and that work was completed within 2 minutes."

Peter Curran, Deputy CEO of Airservices Australia, explained to the committee that the Virgin Australia pilot directly overheard the radio transmission from the Chinese warship on an "international common frequency," which air traffic controllers do not monitor. Mr. Curran stated, "We couldn't hear what was being said, so the Virgin Australia pilot heard what the Chinese warship was saying and then relayed that to air traffic control, who then passed that information through our system and started issuing hazard alerts to all aircraft on that frequency."

Mr. Curran also confirmed that just after 10:00 AM, our National Operations Centre contacted the Defence Joint Operations Command and informed them of the situation, considering that at the time we didn't know whether this was a potential hoax or a real situation, we simply passed on the information. He also confirmed an ABC News report from last Friday that an Emirates UAE3HJ flight from Air New Zealand directly received a warning from the Chinese warship about live-fire exercises at approximately 10:18 AM.

Mr. Curran said during the assessment hearing, "An Emirates flight also made contact with the warship and was advised that they were conducting live firing between 09:30 and 14:00 local time." "In total, 49 aircraft were re-routed on Friday, some of those were aircraft that were airborne at the time and we initially became aware of it, many of those were subsequent flights that were then simply planned to go around that airspace."

Officials stated that flight plans across the Tasman Sea had to be altered throughout the weekend as a "precaution," and these measures were finally lifted on Monday morning as the PLA-N task force had moved south, away from international air routes. Last week, Defence Minister Richard Marles stated that Beijing had failed to satisfactorily explain the short notice given for Friday's live-fire exercises, telling ABC Radio Perth, "We became aware of this issue in the course of the day."