Pilots, beware your tongue

[Skybird]

Lufthansa flight 686 from Frankfurt to Tel Aviv recently triggered an alarm in the Israeli military. during approach the pilot unknowingly used a formulation that was a code telling the tower the the plane had been hijacked, which made the Israelis going to condition red. the pilot did not and could not know what he caused by simple verbal communcation. After planding, the plane was directed to a separated place and was carefully searched and checked. After the Israelis verified that it was a false alarm, the plane continued it's scheduled flight normally.

http://www.welt.de/politik/article17...Alarm_aus.html

Reminds me during a tour in the 80s my father'S orchestra did, when needing to pass eastgerman border controls at the railway station, some comedian considered it funny to answer their question if their were any nitems in his luggage he needed to declare with something like " Oh, no nothing, just a Czeck MP, some ammunition and two handgrenades." The train next was raided by Eastgerman military, all train compartments, suitcases and persons carefully searched, the man arrested, the travel was delayed for half a day, and the orchestra later continued into the socalled "transit traffic" through Eastgermany without the jester, who one or two days later was sent back to Westberlin directly.

Did they learn something from that? No. During another tour, somebody else tried something like this again, with the forseeable result of the man being arrested and questioned for 3 or 4 hours. I just do not remember the details from my father'S description anymore, it was not in Eastgermany, though. USA, I think, early 80s.

[Platapus]

Well I hope the press does not talk about such procedures. The whole purpose of anti-hijacking procedures is that potential hijackers are not supposed to know about them

For this story, I think the media should adopt a "less said the better" approach. ICAO will handle it.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Platapus

For this story, I think the media should adopt a "less said the better" approach.

That would be a first, right?

Anyhow, there is no mystery about this kind of secret code existing. One really would need to be a dumbhead not to imagine that procedures like this exist. So reporting on it hardly does any harm. I could imagine that even certain flight patterns or maneuvers for different phases of flight including approach exist do send secret warnings, like in this example.