https://onemileatatime.com/bomb-threat-el-al-787-fighter-jet...
It should be considered and questioned, but it may not be nefarious.
Only that I have doubts that the pilots did NOT follow the proper protocols or were somehow involved in a conspiracy here. Commercial aviation is one of the few jobs where theres little tolerance for deviation of established protocols and checklists, especially in declared emergencies. And a lot of the routing decisions arent necessarily made by them.
I understand some may find that offensive.. But it doesn't change my view on the matter. Nonetheless, i dont really see what is so controversial about stating it. It doesn't really excuse anything here....
Why are you straining so hard to give this criminal act plausible deniability?
You can easily look up the track of the aircraft. There is no "tailwind" that would have made Minsk the shorter flight.
Im not a pilot, much less a pilot in that part of the world. But I do know that planes are generally only talking to 1 ATC at a time and it takes time to get in touch with another. And that pilots have very specific checklists and procedures when needing to call emergency landings. Listen to the Sully recordings when he ditched in an emergency. NJ was closer but he was still in contact and it would have taken too long.
So if they get called for an emergency and are forced to make a landing, there are protocols in place to swiftly determine the when, where etc of setting down.
Unless you are going to make the accusation that the pilots are political agents/operatives...
He was _talking_ to NY TRACON. That doesn't mean he was somehow required to land in NY, not NJ. His first request to ATC was whether he could land at Teterboro (in NJ). They got on the phone and got permission for him, in order to avoid having to switch frequencies.
> So if they get called for an emergency and are forced to make a landing, there are protocols in place to swiftly determine the when, where etc of setting down.
Indeed there are, and literally none of them have to do with which ATC center the pilot happens to be communicating with at that point.
> Unless you are going to make the accusation that the pilots are political agents/operatives...
The pilots were looking at a MiG-29 out their window. They did not have a choice in the matter.
Europe consistenly gets the highest ranking in things that test for different aspects of freedom (democracy, press, police violence, etc.)
To be clear: it's not that Europe can't do better, but if you care about 'freedom' it's a better place to be than pretty much any other region on the planet.
Other interesting tidbit, the person claimed to be fine about 30 minutes later after talking to 2 doctors. But the ground crew said they required people to go to the hospital now for a full eval.
I see, so if you want an expedited landing you need to convince one of the other passengers on the plane to fake a heart attack.
The article doesn't say that the bomb threat claim came from anyone on the plane. Rather, it implies the pilots were informed of the alleged threat by Belarus air traffic control as the pretext for demanding that the plane divert.
Based on the current facts being reported, it seems pretty clear what is going on here.
Plane crew change squawk code to intercepted (7700) not 7500 which would indicate terrorist act.
What happened is clear even before crew and passengers start giving press interviews in Vilnius.
And please do not compare it to Bolivian case, then crew decided (to land) and was not put under duress by fighter plane.
https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/squawking-7700-in-flight-...
> It would be illegal for the pilots to ignore such an order while inside a country's airspace.
The pilots could report that they are having technical difficulties and are unable to override the current route programmed into the autopilot. They are also have issues disengaging the autopilot. So they are "forced" to continue their flight on their pre-filed flight plan.
Any direction from ATC would be replied with "Unable":
* https://www.boldmethod.com/blog/lists/2021/01/10-times-you-s...
* https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/7915/who-has-th...
* https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/24756/when-can-...
* https://atccommunication.com/cannot-comply-with-an-atc-clear...
Short of shooting down the plane there's nothing anyone can do about it.
This is exactly what Belarus just did. The US and it's allies are now strongly objecting that it's illegal and improper to do exactly what they've previously done.
The idea of mutually agreeing to allow commercial transportation aircraft to transit your airspace is supposed to be that this is not done. It is hugely hypocritical for the US to have used this same tactic, even if done through proxies.
Had Belarus closed their airspace, the ryanair flight would have had to fly around (or divert to Warsaw or Lviv)
Not defending it, especially the alleged search once it landed, but it was very different to a hoax bomb threat on a commercial plane
No it's not?!
Yep, unsophisticated peasants tend to use more force than experienced urbanites. Dreadful, don't you know.
The radio words to use are standardised so they even work in case one side doesn't speak English. The signals are also very simple (rock wings, certain turns, gear up/down).
No need to think about being shot down or not, no need to scare, any commercial flight being intercepted would follow directions.
No sane or insane pilot is going to risk it, however. Unless the pilot was certain that his and all of passengers fate were in danger, they are going to follow that fighter jet.
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/iran-shot-down-plane-ful...
Don’t forget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655
It's not unheard of for military jets to escort civilian planes to an airport, for example
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/ryanair-flight-escort...
(Of course the situation of how the bomb threat came to be is different in this case, and IMO airlines now need to avoid Belarus overflights)
https://twitter.com/PavelLatushka/status/1396519000830582784
Belarusian Air Force fighter-interceptor manoeuvred to signal to the pilots of a Ryanair airliner:follow me”. The captain of the civilian aircraft was obliged to obey. The captain may have disobeyed the dispatcher's command, but the threat from a military aircraft was obligatory.
Did he get on their soil though? Usually, you stay in the international zone when between flights, so, here, the passengers should not have entered Belarus. Do we know what happened in the airport?
for example, when US agents capture people outside US and load them on a plane to bring in to US they actually formally arrest and charge them only when the plane enters US airspace.
Nation states exist in a state of nature, and unfortunately might usually makes right. Superpowers can, and often do, simply decide that aspects of international law just don't apply to them. Of course, that doesn't stop them holding weaker powers to those standards.
To be clear, I don’t think pilots should be in a position to judge the truthfulness of ATF or the government they’re flying over and I don’t think pilot judgment is the “solution” to this loophole that has now been abused twice (that we know). I’m just curious about the process and what would happen if a pilot decided to call the bluff. Would Belarus (or whichever country) scramble fighter jets to force a landing? Would the pilot get in trouble? Is the answer different for a private flight vs commercial flight vs diplomatic flight?
So IMO pilot could ignore their requirements and I think that nothing would happen outside of angry transmissions. Especially if the plane was near border. But I don't think that it would be reasonable, especially in an airplane full of innocent people.
Twice?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident
Clearly what happened here is that the fake bomb threat was an excuse, and the purpose of the interceptor there was to demonstrate to the crew of the airplane that the use of force was a possibility. This plane was "forced down" by any reasonable use of the term.
> This reminds me of force landing Bolivian president’s plane in the EU flying from Moscow when they thought Edward Snowden was on the plane.
Had to correct this elsewhere: there was no forced landing there at all. They were denied airspace privileges to cross most of western europe, which isn't the same thing at all. They landed in a friendly-ish nation, and were never boarded by anyone hostile or otherwise intercepted by law enforcement.
What happened in the Snowden case was DIPLOMACY ("you may not travel here if you carry this man"), not force.
The pilots could report that they are having technical difficulties and are unable to override the current route programmed into the autopilot. They are also have issues disengaging the autopilot. So they are "forced" to continue their flight on their pre-filed flight plan.
Any direction from ATC would be replied with "Unable":
* https://www.boldmethod.com/blog/lists/2021/01/10-times-you-s...
* https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/7915/who-has-th...
* https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/24756/when-can-...
* https://atccommunication.com/cannot-comply-with-an-atc-clear...
Short of shooting down the plane there's nothing anyone can do about it.
So repercussions tend to range from nothing, through wagging fingers, slaps on the wrist, to sanctions, UN resolutions, UN-sanctioned wars, or if you really piss someone off, non-sanctioned wars.
I don’t think Belarus will be invaded, and I guess Russia would veto any particularly nasty move in the UN, so really this leaves stern words and some unilateral sanctions against the Lukshenko regime. Doesn’t seem like overwhelming penalty (though well-targeted and enforced sanctions can bite quite badly).
And MiG-29 sprinkled same kind of diplomacy here - they weren't shot down, they just were diplomatically notified that in their best interest is to land down. See, no force, pure diplomacy.
Denying Morale's plane permission was an act of diplomacy, albeit a very uncommon one and one in pursuit of an unjust goal.
Forcing down a foreign airplane on an international flight to arrest someone on it is an act of war. Sorry.
Same thing happened on 9/11 - US chose do land all aircrafts, and in case that anyone disobeyed orders it would be promptly shot down - foreign planes or not, it didn't matter in slightest.
Second: they let the plane in on a flight plan that clearly took it to Vilnius. Again, that's false pretenses.
Per the analogy above: consider a consulate telling someone "sure, you can board this plane without your passport, it's fine" and then arresting the person for a visa violation on landing.
Looks like they learned from the best.
Yeah, this is trolling.
A major international incident (the head of state of one nation violating the airspace of another) that completely and utterly dwarfs whatever nonsense was going on with Snowden. I know it's hard for geeks here to understand, but Snowden just isn't that important.
Again: he wasn't even on the plane. And Morales apparently had no intention of putting him on there. He was just pissed off that no one trusted him about that.
The Ryanair plane didn't deliberately violate the airspace of Belarus in violation of withdrawn permission, they filed a flight plan to Vilnius just like they had every day for years and years. It was an airliner on a scheduled flight.
Your counterfactual involving a deliberate invasion of another country seems... extraordinarily weird. I mean, yes, countries defend their airspace when it's invaded by other nations in violation of established treaties. Duh. That is not what happened yesterday at all and you fucking know it. Stop this.
So while we know who “someone” is and that it’s all planned in advance (the journalist reported that he was followed minutes before take-off), technically speaking the safety protocols were followed, and when landed they arrested a wanted man once he was on their soil.
This reminds me of force landing Bolivian president’s plane in the EU flying from Moscow when they thought Edward Snowden was on the plane.