Dramatic cockpit calls reveal Australian pilots’ alarm over Chinese live firing exercise

1 week ago 4

The moment a Virgin Airlines pilot raised the alarm about a live firing exercise by Chinese warships in the Tasman Sea can be revealed after Nine News obtained audio of cockpit calls under freedom of information laws.

A lack of notice before the drill, which took place in international waters between Australia and New Zealand in February, forced the diversion of 49 aircraft and raised tensions between the Australian and Chinese governments.

“We’ve just had a warning from a Chinese naval taskforce that they’re doing a live firing exercise,” the pilot of Virgin flight VA161 from Sydney to Queenstown told an air traffic control team in Australia. “Is anyone aware of that?”

Air traffic control said it would check. The pilot then followed up with another request for more details, asking: “Did they advise a level that they’d be firing to?”

Air traffic control replied they had only been given a 10-mile radius and later informed the pilot his plane was out of the firing zone. “So if we go missing you’ll know what happened hey,” the pilot said soon after, to which the controller replied “Good luck”.

In turn, the controller advised an Emirates pilot to change course to avoid the live fire drill, saying “you will essentially fly right over the top of that position”.

A Qantas plane relayed back to air traffic control that an Emirates flight had advised of firing up to 15 kilometres (49,000 feet). Commercial passenger jets fly around 10 kilometres (35,000) above sea level.

“These actions by the Chinese military caused a period of significant uncertainty,” Steve Cornell, a vice president of the Australian and International Pilots Association, told Nine News.

“It was certainly irresponsible. It’s a big piece of water out there and they didn’t need to park their ships under a particularly busy route. I’m sure they certainly knew that would cause a level of disruption.”

While China was not required under international law to alert the Australian Defence Force ahead of the exercise, then shadow defence minister Andrew Hastie labelled the drills a “provocation” and “gunboat diplomacy”.

Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong posted on X that she had sought an explanation from China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi about why Chinese vessels had conducted the drills “without advance notification”.

“I raised Australia’s expectations around safe and professional military conduct,” Wong said.

Defence Minister Richard Marles said at the time the Australian government had not received a satisfactory answer. “When Australia, for example, does a live-firing event such as this – which countries are entitled do on the high seas and that’s where this task group is, they’re in international waters – we would typically give 12 to 24 hours’ notice,” he said.

But a spokesman for China’s Ministry of National Defense condemned Australia’s “unfounded claims” about the exercises, arguing the navy had given “repeated safety notices” in advance.

“Australia has unjustly criticised China and deliberately exaggerated the issue, and we are astonished and strongly dissatisfied with this,” the spokesman said.