> As a precaution, the German Air Force deployed its aircraft to ensure the safety of the flight and its guests.
sure, safety of the flight and guests, you mean humanely killed by rocket instead of hitting some target on ground?
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Making visual contact and making sure that the passengers and the crew are not in distress.
Could've been cabin preassure loss and all of them are passed out all dead just as much as hijacking.
Shooting down can be just as achieved with surface to air missiles.
We send jets to establish contact and use short range and if needed LOS communication to figure out what is going.
> cabin preassure loss and all of them are passed out
What could the fighter jets possibly do to "save" the passengers in such a situation?
Not much. That's why you send someone to actually take a look up close, and see if that's actually the case or not. OTOH, both pilots dozing off or becoming distracted - now that tends to happen, too. In that case, "knock knock, who's there? German Airforce" tends to resolve the situation fairly quickly and without further incident*, as seen here.
(Other than "a wild mountain of paperwork appears")
There was a huge debate back then when the government wanted to legalize shooting down a plane that is being controlled by terrorists and has innocent people on board. The German Supreme Court ruled that this is unconstitutional and illegal.
The supreme court ruled that the law that allowed the order to shoot down the plane was unconstitutional. There are differing oppionions on how other laws apply, for example Nothilfe (defence of a third person).
At least a fighter pilot acting on his own accord seems to be legally able to shoot a plane down if a real danger seems to exists.