Following a crisis response drill conducted on Wednesday, the German government made clear that it would not authorize the shooting down of a hijacked passenger aircraft. Deputy government spokesman Sebastian Hille told the dts news agency on Friday that the legal situation regarding this matter is “unequivocal”.
He pointed to a 2006 ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court, which stipulated that a passenger plane seized by terrorists cannot be shot down to save people on the ground. The corresponding rules in the Air Safety Act were declared unconstitutional.
However, the former Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung (CDU) claimed in 2007 that he would carry out the action nonetheless, stating, “If there is no other option, I would give the order to shoot down [the plane] in order to protect our citizens” referencing the right of a “higher law state of emergency”. The current federal government, however, appears unwilling to invoke this stance anymore. Hille declined to comment on “such statements from the past”.
The German government carried out an inter-departmental crisis response exercise led by the Chancellor on Wednesday, which it described as “successful”. A specific scenario involved the government practicing its reaction to the fictional hijacking of a civilian aircraft in German airspace. According to the government, in the simulation, the “hijacked” plane, which was genuinely airborne for testing purposes, was intercepted and accompanied to an airfield in Northern Germany by an emergency unit of the Bundeswehr, consisting of two Eurofighter fighter jets, based on a cabinet decision.
