Virgin Airlines pilot first alerted authorities to Chinese live fire danger on Friday

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Aviation authorities revealed they found out about a potential Chinese "live fire" military exercise in the Tasman Sea last week when a Virgin Airlines pilot broadcast warnings he had picked up mid-flight using an emergency radio channel.

Airservices Australia reps have told a parliamentary hearing that nearly 50 flights had to change course on Friday after the People's Liberation Army-Navy (PLA-N) indicated it was conducting hazardous drills in heavily trafficked international airspace.

Under questioning from opposition senators, Airservices Australia CEO Rob Sharp has confirmed the government-owned organisation responsible for managing air traffic found out about the risk to aircraft at 9:58am on a Friday morning in the ACT.

"It was actually a Virgin Australia plane that told one of our air traffic controllers that a foreign warship was saying they were doing live firing exercises about 300 nautical miles off our coast," Mr Sharp said.

At 10 o'clock, our air traffic control started what we call a 'hazard alert', which basically warns all flights in the area about a potential hazard, so that was done within two minutes.

Deputy Airservices Australia CEO Peter Curran told the committee that the Virgin pilot listened in on radio broadcasts straight from one of the Chinese warships over an "international guard frequency", which isn't monitored by air traffic controllers.

"We can't pick up what was said, so the pilot of the Virgin plane heard what was said from the Chinese ship, relayed that back to air traffic control, who then passed that through our system and started issuing warning alerts to all planes on the frequency," Mr Curran said.

After 10am our national operations centre rang Defence Joint Operations Command and let them know about the situation, keeping in mind that at that point we weren't sure if it was a possible hoax or the real deal, so we just passed on the information.

Mr Curran also confirmed an ABC news report on Friday that Emirates flight UAE3HJ bound for New Zealand was directly warned by Chinese warships about live firing exercises at around 10:18am.

"A Emirates flight was also in contact with the warships, and it was told that they were conducting live firing between 9:30 and 2:00 local time," Mr Curran said at the estimates hearing.

On Friday, a total of 49 planes had to change course, including some that were already in the air when we first found out about the issue, and many others that were scheduled to fly later, which were then redirected to avoid the affected airspace.

Bureau officials say trans-Tasman flight plans had to be altered over the weekend as a precautionary measure, with the restrictions finally lifted on Monday morning once the PLA-N taskforce had moved further south, away from international air routes.

Last week, Defence Minister Richard Marles said Beijing hadn't given a good enough reason for not giving enough notice of the live-fire exercise held on Friday, telling Perth's ABC Radio, "we found out about the issue during the day".

During an appearance on the ABC's Q+A on Monday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that the incident occurred outside Australia's economic zone and that notice had been given, though it would have been better with more warning.

"We're lodging an official complaint, if you like, that more notice should've been given if this activity was going to happen," he said.