{"id":11100,"date":"2026-08-18T07:30:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T07:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/11100\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T07:30:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T07:30:18","slug":"cathay-pacific-pilots-selected-wrong-radio-frequency-before-nato-jets-intercepted-flight-investigation-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/11100\/","title":{"rendered":"Cathay Pacific pilots selected wrong radio frequency before NATO jets intercepted flight, investigation finds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>CAD previously expressed \u201cserious concern\u201d over the incident, which first came to light when Hungarian Minister of Defence Romulusz Ruszin-Szendi said that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.channelnewsasia.com\/east-asia\/cathay-pacific-cx257-flight-london-hong-kong-hungary-nato-fighter-jets-interception-6243051\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">two fighter jets had been scrambled<\/a> under NATO\u2019s quick reaction alert.<\/p>\n<p>The jets were deployed after \u201can A350 aircraft registered in China, operating a Hong Kong to London flight, failed to establish contact with Romanian civilian air traffic control while still in Romanian airspace\u201d, the minister said in a post on Facebook in July.<\/p>\n<p>Following the incident, Cathay Pacific implemented a host of \u201cimprovement measures\u201d, CAD said &#8211; which included \u201cenhancing the operational and monitoring procedures for the flight crew regarding the communication system and reminding them to be more vigilant at all times\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>It also said that it had instructed the airline to \u201crobustly follow up on relevant improvement measures\u201d, including \u201cproviding additional training and assessment for the concerned flight crew\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCAD reiterated the importance of maintaining good communications between the flight crew and air traffic controllers at all times to ensure aviation safety,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n<p>Cathay Pacific has since implemented the \u201crelated improvement measures\u201d in mid-July, it added.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCAD will continue to closely monitor the effectiveness of the measures implemented by (Cathay Pacific),\u201d it said.<\/p>\n<p>CNA has reached out to Cathay Pacific for official comment.<\/p>\n<p>The airline previously said that it took the event \u201cextremely seriously\u201d and the flight had adhered to its authorised routing at all times.<\/p>\n<p>Safety of the aircraft and those on board had not been compromised and communication was eventually restored, Cathay Pacific said, adding that the aircraft had continued to Heathrow Airport \u201cas planned\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CAD previously expressed \u201cserious concern\u201d over the incident, which first came to light when Hungarian Minister of Defence&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11101,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1311,6569,4267],"class_list":["post-11100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-aviation","tag-cathay-pacific","tag-hong-kong"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}