Somewhere over the Balkans, shortly after 11 o'clock on Tuesday morning, a routine holiday flight from Corfu to Nuremberg set four digits in its transponder that no air traffic controller wants to see: 7500. In the language of aviation, that code means unlawful interference. In plain words: hijack.

Then the radio went quiet. Controllers called the cockpit and got nothing back. Before long, NATO fighter jets were involved, and by the time the Boeing 737 began its descent towards Franconia, two German Eurofighters were sitting off its wingtips.

It ended without a single injury. The aircraft landed on time, the police found nothing, and the most likely culprit is a faulty radio. But for more than two hours on 13 October 2026, Corendon flight XR456 was treated exactly as the code demanded: as a possible hijacking.

A Code, Then Silence

According to the regional police headquarters for Middle Franconia, the code came directly from the cockpit about halfway through the flight. What turned a worrying signal into a full alert was what happened next: air traffic control could not raise the crew, and neither could the tower. A 7500 squawk on its own is serious. A 7500 squawk followed by radio silence is the scenario every air defence system is built around.

The response began well before the jet reached Germany. Regional broadcaster News5 and other local outlets reported that a Croatian Air Force jet escorted the 737 to the Slovenian border after a warning from NATO's air command centre in Torrejón, Spain, which oversees air policing over southern Europe. One passenger told News5 that he first noticed a Greek fighter alongside, and later a jet in German markings. He also said that, had it been real, he would have been terrified.

Inside German airspace the job fell to the German Air Force. According to Germany's air navigation service DFS, the two Eurofighter Typhoons came from Taktisches Luftwaffengeschwader 74 at Neuburg an der Donau, the wing that keeps a pair of armed jets on quick reaction alert around the clock to cover southern Germany. That pair is known as the Alarmrotte.

Lockdown at Nuremberg

On the ground, Nuremberg Airport was shut down. Police cordoned off the airport and its access roads and brought in special forces units. Police spokesman Michael Petzold said that, because nobody could reach the cockpit for the rest of the flight, officers had to take the situation very seriously from the very start.

The 737 touched down at about a quarter past twelve, exactly on schedule. Airport managing director Michael Hupe pointed out that both the take-off from Corfu and the landing had been on time, which is not what anyone expects from a hijacked aircraft. The Eurofighters stayed overhead until there was no further risk of the airliner taking off again, then turned for home.

Only once the jet was parked did anyone manage to talk to the crew. Passengers stayed on board for about an hour and a half while officers checked the aircraft, then left by the stairs and were taken by bus to the terminal, where an emergency care team offered them psychological support. The airport reopened in the early afternoon, after roughly an hour of closure.

A Radio Fault, Most Likely

Corendon attributed the alert to a malfunction in the radio system, and police said a technical defect in the radio was the most likely trigger. The airport police are investigating together with the airline, the pilot and the airport operator. Germany's Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation, the BFU, is responsible for the technical side.

There is an irony here for anyone who knows their codes. Pilots who lose their radio are supposed to set 7600, the communications-failure code, which differs from the hijack code by a single digit. Whether 7500 went out because of an electrical fault, a wrong selection or something else is exactly what the investigation now has to establish. Until it reports, the code's origin remains officially unexplained.

Police were also quick to rule out any connection with a separate scare earlier the same day. Between about two and four in the morning, three pilots reported a possible drone near the airfield. A police helicopter and drone-detection equipment found nothing, but six flights were delayed and two were diverted to Cologne and Prague. Petzold said the two events could not be linked in any way.

Why the System Worked

For the people on board, the Eurofighter alongside was the scariest moment of their holiday. For the air defence system, it was a textbook day. A code was set, communication failed, and NATO air forces handed a civilian airliner from one escort to the next across several countries until it was safely on the ground and empty. Nobody could rule out the worst case, so everyone acted as if it were real.

Only a short while earlier, Luftwaffe Eurofighters had been operating out of Nuremberg Airport itself as part of a dispersed-operations exercise. On Tuesday they were back over the same runway, and this time it was no exercise until the police said otherwise.

Regional broadcaster NEWS5 reports from Nuremberg Airport on 13 October 2026, including the Eurofighter escort and the police operation (in German).

How do the fighters get there so fast? Our explainer: Quick Reaction Alert Explained: How Fighters Intercept a Hijacked Airliner.

Sources: t-online (Nuremberg); inFranken.de; bluewin / dpa; Air Data News; Aerohaber; NEWS5.