Passengers terrified of being 'shot down' after holiday flight 'tracked' by fighter jet
Holidaymakers flying home from Spain were left deeply unsettled last week when they were joined by a French fighter jet just off their left wing.
The Jet2 plane was en route to Birmingham from Malaga on Friday when passengers spotted the military aircraft just dozens of metres away.
“It was so close I could read the writing on its tail fin,” passenger Sarah Hatfield told PA.
The jet seemed to tail the Jet2 plane for 15 minutes before peeling off. Jet2 said it was awaiting an explanation from the French air force.
“Someone spotted the French jet and told the cabin crew, who I presume told the Jet2 pilots,” said Ms Hatfield, from Quarry Bank in the West Midlands, who was travelling with her husband Ian and 13-year-old daughter Emily.
She said among the passengers there was “a mixture of excitement at seeing the fighter so close up and terror as to if we were about to get shot down”.
“The air stewardess then announced there was nothing to worry about,” she added.
“Ian was terrified and it didn’t help that loads of other passengers came by us to look at it.”
A spokesperson for Jet2 said: “We are awaiting clarification from the French air traffic authorities, as to why a military was apparently tracking our aircraft.”
It is rare that a military jet joins a passenger jet in the sky, but sometimes it is necessary to escort an aircraft to its destination or through a section of airspace.
In March a private plane from Bucharest was escorted into Birmingham Airport by RAF fighter jets after it experienced communication difficulties. The aircraft was met by two Typhoon jets scrambled from RAF Coningsby, and a Voyager aircraft, from Brize Norton.
In 2014, an RAF Typhoon jet escorted a Qatar Airways aircraft into Manchester Airport after a pilot requested assistance when a passenger on board made a bomb threat.
