False alarm – glider pilot triggered search operation with distress signals

Alleged plane crashes and a series of “emergency situations” kept the Tyrol control center, Austro Control and emergency services on their toes on Thursday afternoon. After emergency signals had been repeatedly issued by an unregistered flying object, large search operations were started in the Tyrolean lowlands. Luckily, everything turned out differently in the end.

At around 12 noon, a 60-year-old German took off with his glider pilot from the airfield in Langkampfen (district of Kufstein): The pilot carried out all the safety checks in advance and of course also checked the so-called “ELT system”, the radio transmitter, with the help of which in Emergency aircraft can be located. The system was activated unnoticed, and this was exactly what should cause a lot of excitement in the next few hours: “According to current knowledge, this system was probably activated manually for permanent operation by vibrations during the take-off maneuver, without the pilot noticing it.” , reported the police. The result: Around 4:30 p.m., the Tyrol control center reported a possible crash of an unregistered German aircraft in the Hinteres Sonnwendjoch area in the Thiersee municipality. At about the same time, the state control center reported another alleged plane crash near the Feldalphorn in Hopfgarten. Contact not possible “It was not possible to contact the pilot and give a more precise description of the flying object because the ELT system was not registered. Therefore, a search operation with three helicopters was started. Austro Control received further emergency signals while the search operation was still ongoing. These were also flown off, but the search was negative,” the investigators continued. “The pilot was then immediately asked to land. It turned out that the emergency signal was only triggered for technical reasons.” The search operations could thus be aborted.
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