Corendon Airlines Boeing 737-800 Squawks 7500 in Error, Triggering Fighter Escort and Nuremberg Airport Closure

A Corendon Airlines Boeing 737-800, registration 9H-CXD, operating flight XR456 from Corfu (CFU) to Nuremberg (NUE), transmitted the hijacking squawk code 7500 shortly after departure on Tuesday. German authorities scrambled fighter jets and Nuremberg Airport suspended operations.

Flightradar24 data shows the aircraft left Corfu at 11:05 AM local time. The 7500 squawk lasted from 11:15 AM to 11:28 AM Greek time while the aircraft was still climbing to the northwest, after which the flight continued to Nuremberg as normal. Police said the code was transmitted from the cockpit and the pilot could no longer be reached by radio, so various alarm scrambles were triggered for safety reasons. Corendon Airlines said the signal was sent in error because of a radio malfunction.

Eurofighter Typhoon military aircraft escorted the jet, which landed in Nuremberg at 12:16 PM local time, one minute behind schedule, after two hours and 11 minutes in the air. The fighters then returned to base. Polizei Mittelfranken said on-site inspections of the aircraft determined there was no danger. Passengers and crew disembarked at 1:33 PM, 76 minutes after landing.

Nuremberg Airport was to be closed until 2:00 PM UTC (4:00 PM local time). 9H-CXD had been scheduled to depart Nuremberg at 2:00 PM local time for Gran Canaria (LPA) and was expected to be delayed.

At the time of writing, Flightradar24 data showed 35 flights at the airport delayed and three canceled, with a disruption index score of 3.4 on its zero-to-five scale.

Several flights diverted: Marabu flight DI6035 from Mallorca (PMI) went to Stuttgart (STR); a Corendon flight from Mallorca went to Munich; a Wizz flight from Cluj (CLJ) went to Memmingen (FMM); and a Ryanair service from Girona (GRO) went to Prague (PRG).

The 7500 code is designed to trigger an immediate security response, and this case shows how far that response reaches when the cause is an equipment fault rather than a threat. One radio malfunction produced a military escort, an airport suspension, diversions to four other airports, and a delayed onward rotation for the same aircraft.

For airlines operating seasonal leisure routes into secondary airports, the cost of such an event falls less on the aircraft involved than on the airport's wider schedule, where a closure of a few hours ripples into delays, cancellations and diversions for unrelated carriers.

The detail still to be settled is the technical finding behind the radio malfunction Corendon cited, and whether the airline or authorities publish anything further on how a transponder code and loss of radio contact came together on one flight.