The airspace surveillance and defense service by the Air Force does not stop at this moment of national emergency. Two fighters Eurofighter of 4 ° Stormo di Grosseto intervened to intercept an Airbus 320 Easyjet which took off from England and headed for Malta, which during the flight over the national airspace had lost radio contact with the civil air traffic bodies.
The two fighters, at the time of the request for intervention, were already in flight for a training mission. The order to remodel the mission from training to real was given by the CAOC (Combined Air Operation Center) of Torrejon in Spain, the NATO body responsible for the area, in coordination with the Air Operations Command (COA) of Poggio Renatico.
The "hunting guide" staff of the 11th DAMI Group of Poggio Renatico provided the pilots of the two Eurofighters in flight with the coordinates and information necessary to reach the civil aircraft and carry out the envisaged "visual identification" (VID) procedure, to ensure that there were no emergency conditions.
After the restoration of radio communications, the two fighters returned to the Maremma air base.
