ICAO Council requests further investigation into Ryanair incident

February 1, BPN. The Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) at a meeting on January 31 requested to continue investigating the incident with the Irish Ryanair flight en route from Athens to Vilnius that made an emergency landing at Minsk airport on May 23, 2021, “in light of some newly emerging information.”

The ICAO Investigation Team should establish “missing facts,” “including in connection with the related ongoing criminal and other investigations,” as well as report any further findings.

The Council called upon all Member States to continue collaboration with the investigation team, instructing the President of the Council to forward the final Fact-Finding Investigation Report to the UN Secretary-General.

The Council praised the ICAO Investigation Team for the “exhaustive analysis undertaken and high quality of the report it produced.”

The Council “expressed concern at the gaps in information provided by Belarus and the inconsistences contained in the evidence available at the time of the investigation in relation to crucial aspects of the factual reconstruction of the events, and highlighted that the bomb threat against FR4978 was deliberately false and had endangered the safety of an aircraft in flight.”

The meeting pointed out that communicating false information endangering the safety of an aircraft was an offence under the Montreal Convention and therefore strongly condemned such practices.

Officials from non-Council state were invited to the meeting, including from Belarus, Lithuania, Poland (home country of the aircraft), and Ireland.

On January 18, ICAO communicated that the report was ready and forwarded to its 193 member states.

Opposition activist Raman Pratasievič and his girlfriend Safija Sapieha were on board the Ryanair flight. Both were detained by the Belarusian special services after the landing of the aircraft.

Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary called the incident a deliberate hijacking of an aircraft on the orders of the Belarusian authorities. Representatives of many countries are convinced that the flight was forcibly landed. Official Minsk denies the charges.

The incident led to an international scandal, as a result of which many European airlines stopped flying over Belarus and all neighbouring countries, except Russia, closed their skies to Belarusian planes.

On January 21, Aliaksandr Lukašenka advised the ICAO to “let things slide.” He claimed that Belarus did nothing illegal in that situation: “If they are ready to prove otherwise, they need to show the evidence. There are no facts, we can see that too, it (ICAO fact-finding report on the incident – BPN) has now been shared with all ICAO member countries. You know who’s in charge there. The best thing for them is to let things slide and not to get lost in the wilds. They are going down the rabbit hole here. Better not to get lost in the wild: nothing good awaits them.”

According to Lukašenka, ICAO has admitted that there was no interception, forced landing or diversion of the Ryanair aircraft.