Airservices Australia has revealed that a Virgin Airlines pilot was the first to spot three Chinese warships off Australia’s east coast last week.
Three Chinese warships — a frigate, cruiser and replenishment ship — were found just 150 nautical miles off Sydney in the Tasman Sea on Friday morning.
Beijing confirmed it was conducting live-fire drills in the international waters.
Airservices Australia chief executive Rob Sharpe told the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee last night the organisation was alerted to their presence at 9.58 am.
“It was, in fact, a Virgin Australia aircraft that advised one of our air traffic controllers that a foreign warship was broadcasting, that they were conducting live firing 300 nautical miles east off our coast,” he told senators.
“So that’s how we first found out about the issue.”
Airservices Australia deputy chief executive Peter Curran added that the warships were picked up on an international guard frequency, which air traffic controllers do not monitor but pilots do.
According to the heads of the government-owned organisation, a hazard alert was issued to all flights in the area within two minutes of the report at 10 am and the Australian Defence Force was notified shortly after.
“At that stage, we didn’t know whether it was a potential hoax or real. We simply passed the information as per standard procedure,” Curran said.
Curran said an Emirates aircraft pilot made contact with the Chinese warships at 10.18 am and was told they were conducting live firing.
Air traffic controllers then diverted 49 flights.
“Some of that was the aircrafts that were in the air at the time that we first became aware of it, many of them were flights afterwards that were subsequently flight planned to reroute around the airspace,” Curran said.
“Flight plans continued to divert throughout the weekend as a matter of precaution.”
Curran said the three vessels had moved further down south in the Tasman Sea by yesterday morning, away from the airways so flights are no longer diverting.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was questioned on whether he was concerned Virgin was the first to report the Chinese warships at a press conference this morning but maintained that Defence was “certainly aware” of them.
“Australia has had frigates, both monitoring by sea and by air, of the presence in the region of these Chinese vessels,” he said at a press conference this morning.
Last week, Albanese confirmed China’s actions were consistent with international law but Foreign Minister Penny Wong flagged concerns about transparency over the testing.
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