On Apr. 18, a Kuwaitian C-130 UK-bound, coming from Athens and crossing the Italian airspace was intercepted by two F-16s of the 5th Stormo. The Italian fighters took off from Cervia, intercepted the “zombie” over PNZ (Ponza) radiobeacon at 08.45L, identified it and escorted it until the boundaries of the Italian airspace.
On some forums and mailing lists, commenting a previous Scramble, people wondered why an aircraft flying througn multiple NATO countries was intercepted intercepted and escorted only from Italy.
As I’ve explained a FPL must contain a diplomatic clearance to cross some countries’ airspaces. The diplo clearance is issued by each country individually so a flight can have a valid one to cross a
country and an expired one to cross another one. At least in Italy, if a flight has no diplo clearance, the QRA (Quick Reaction Alert) will be scrambled to visually identify the traffic. That’s why scambles are not at all rare things.
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