Excitement about a bang in the night: what was behind it.
Frankfurt/Erfurt/Munich – On Saturday night (August 20) a bang woke numerous people in Germany from their sleep. In Hesse, Thuringia and Bavaria in particular, the noise was clearly audible in the early hours of the morning, as reported by numerous users on social networks. A spokesman for the police headquarters in East Hesse also confirmed to HR that concerned citizens had called the emergency number.
According to a report by MDR , however, it was a deployment of two Bundeswehr Eurofighters. A military spokesman explained afterwards that the fighter jets rose to secure the airspace over Germany. It was about an Airbus that was heading towards North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). The passenger plane could no longer be reached at short notice, which is why the so-called alarm squad was activated, it said. Meanwhile, there is still some ambiguity about where the Airbus came from. The Bundeswehr reported that he flew to North Rhine-Westphalia from Turkey. The Air Force itself said in a statement that the plane came from Slovakia. It has not yet been clarified where the Airbus 320 left for North Rhine-Westphalia.
Loud bang in the night: Eurofighters accompany Airbus 320 to NRW
The mechanism of the alarm squad has existed in Germany since the attacks of September 11, 2001. A kidnapping, for example, could not be ruled out, the Bundeswehr spokesman told MDR .
The Airbus A320 could finally be radioed at around 2 a.m. The passenger plane later landed smoothly. In a statement, the Air Force later apologized for the inconvenience in the middle of the night. The police headquarters in Lower Franconia tweeted: “The loud bang that was heard in Lower Franconia at around 2 a.m. tonight was a so-called sonic boom. The reason for this was the briefly broken radio contact to an aircraft, which could be re-established.”
Editor’s Note: A previous version of the article gave an incorrect date of the incident. We apologize for this error. (do)
