Australian officials did not know Chinese warships were conducting live-fire drills in the Tasman Sea until a Virgin commercial pilot alerted aviation authorities half an hour after they had begun.
Officials from Airservices Australia, the agency responsible for aviation safety, told a Senate estimates hearing on Monday night that it was first informed of the live-fire drill at 9.58am on Friday morning, when a Virgin pilot was informed by the Chinese navy flotilla by radio.
On Tuesday, a spokesperson for the Australian defence minister, Richard Marles, told Guardian Australia: “Defence is aware of Task Group 107 advising by verbal radio broadcast on a civil aircraft channel of its intent on 21 February 2025 to conduct live firing activity in the Tasman Sea, 346 nautical miles [640 kilometres] off Eden.
“The Australian Government has raised its concern with the lack of notice on the live fire activity from the Chinese Government, including through appropriate channels in Canberra and Beijing.”
The live-fire drills, which caused nearly 50 commercial flights to be diverted, were conducted in international waters and in accordance with international law.
Marles told media on Friday that the Australian government was not notified by China and became aware of the live firing during the course of the day. “What China did was put out a notification that it was intending to engage in live firing,” Marles said. “By that I mean a broadcast that was picked up by airlines or literally planes that were commercial planes that were flying across the Tasman.”
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, was asked at a press conference on Tuesday whether it was a concern that it was a commercial pilot who first learned of the Chinese warship live-fire exercise, rather than Australia’s defence department or government.
He responded that Defence had “certainly [been] aware” of the warships and he had spoken with the chief of the ADF about what had occurred.
“Australia has had frigates, both monitoring by sea and by air, of the presence in the region of these Chinese vessels,” he said.
Airservices Australia chief executive, Rob Sharp, told estimates on Monday that the organisation “first found out about the issue” from Virgin Australia “advising that a foreign warship was broadcasting that they were conducting live firing 300 nautical miles east of our coast”.
The deputy chief executive, Peter Curran, said the Chinese navy’s message was broadcast in English on an international guard frequency – an emergency radio channel monitored by pilots but not by air traffic control. The aircraft was capable of picking up the radio signal within 250nm of the vessel.
The plane was potentially within line of sight of the Chinese vessels, estimates heard.
Questioned further on exactly how close, he said: “You can pick up a radio signal at the altitude the Virgin aircraft was at out to about 250 nautical miles, I don’t know exactly the distance.”
After being alerted to the live-fire drill by the Virgin pilot, air traffic controllers issued a hazard alert within two minutes, establishing an 18km exclusion zone around the flotilla, extending to a height of 45,000 feet, at 10am.
Curran told senators that Airservices Australia notified the Australian defence force’s Joint Operations Command Headquarters 10 minutes after the initial contact from the Virgin pilot.
“At that stage, we didn’t know whether it was a potential hoax or real,” he said.
Twenty minutes after the initial contact, at 10.18am, a separate commercial flight operated by Emirates was in radio contact with the Chinese warships, which informed pilots that the live firing exercise had commenced at 9.30am and would conclude at 2pm.
The Chinese navy did not provide a notice to airmen, or NOTAM, an international procedure giving 24 to 48 hours’ notice of upcoming live firing exercises, Curran said.
Curran gave evidence that 49 aircraft diverted their flight paths on Friday. Some were rerouted while they were in the air, while others were given different flight paths to avoid the Chinese flotilla’s location at sea.
Flights continued to be diverted until Monday but the ships have since moved farther south away from trans-Tasman flight paths, estimates heard.
The three People’s Liberation Army-Navy vessels – the Jiangkai-class frigate Hengyang, the Renhai-class cruiser Zunyi and the Fuchi-class replenishment vessel Weishanhu – have been surveilled by Australian and New Zealand navies for more than a week, since they were first detected in the Coral Sea to Australia’s north-east.
