Officials said in a government hearing that some 49 commercial flights were declared by the Chinese warships last Friday when the East coast of the Navy had unexpectedly announced, a government said in a government hearing.
Three warships held a series of live-fire drills on Friday and Saturday, under a busy flight path connecting Australia and New Zealand.
A commercial flight from Virgin Australia broadcast Chinese warships for the first time and alerted the country’s air security agency on Friday morning.
“At that level we did not know whether it was a potential cheating or real,” Air Services Australia Deputy Chief Executive Peter Curan told a government hearing on Monday evening.
Curan said that the broadcast was on a channel monitored by pilots. “This is the international guard frequency. Air traffic control does not monitor that frequency but pilots.
Of the 49 flights, there were some people when the air safety agency knew about the drill and confirmed their validity, Curan said. In addition to Virgin Australia, flights operated Kantas, Air New Zealand and Emirates, revising their flight paths.
While this exercise took place in international water, Australia and New Zealand have criticized Beijing for conducting practice with fixed warnings.
What has China said about the case?
China has defended its conduct as “safe, standard and professional”.
On Saturday, Canberra said that he did not get satisfactory clarification from Beijing about Friday’s drill.
China’s Defense Ministry on Sunday replied that the Australian government’s remarks were “fully inconsistent with facts” and Beijing had practiced “repeatedly pre -security notices”.
Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Wu Qian said, “Australia, while well known about this, made unattainable allegations against China and deliberately hypnotized it.”
He said that Beijing was “amazed and strongly dissatisfied”.
The incident occurs within a month of Canberra, accusing Beijing of “unsafe” military conduct, as the latter fighter jet demolished flarers near an Australian Air Force aircraft in the South China Sea. Beijing has said that the Australian plan is infiltrating the airspace without China’s permission.
Edited by ZAC Crellin
