Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Please knock before attacking
Not that anybody in their right mind would do so, but if you are planning a conquest of Switzerland the weekend would be a good time to do it.
No Swiss fighter jets were scrambled Monday when an Ethiopian Airlines co-pilot hijacked his own plane and forced it to land in Geneva, because it happened outside business hours, the Swiss airforce said.It seems the Swiss have their budget properly prioritzed.
When the co-pilot on flight ET-702 from Addis Ababa to Rome locked himself in the cockpit while the pilot went to the bathroom and announced a hijacking, Italian and French fighter jets were scrambled to escort the plane through their respective airspaces.
But although the co-pilot-turned-hijacker quickly announced he wanted to land the plane in Switzerland, where he later said he aimed to seek asylum, Switzerland’s fleet of F-18s and F-5 Tigers remained on the ground, Swiss airforce spokesman Laurent Savary told AFP.
This, he explained, was because the Swiss airforce is only available during office hours. These are reported to be from 8am until noon, then 1:30 to 5pm.
“Switzerland cannot intervene because its airbases are closed at night and on the weekend,” he said, adding: “It’s a question of budget and staffing.”
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Their pilots are all part-time volunteers (they have no full-time army or air force, and of course no navy at all) so they would have had to go roust some pilots out of bed anyhow. By the time they could have gotten a pilot to the fighter, the airliner would have been landed anyhow.
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