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ICAO Issues A Report Into Last Year’s Ryanair Belarus Diversion

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The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has released a fact-finding report on the forced landing of a Ryanair flight in Minsk last year. Detailing the timeline of the events and the statements of those involved in the incident, the report has been sent to all the ICAO Member States. However, several news publications have also reviewed the document and made interesting observations.

Ryanair 737-800
ICAO has released a detailed report about the incident involving Ryanair flight FR 4978 last year. Photo: Getty Images

ICAO releases report

On January 17, the ICAO sent its fact-finding report involving the Ryanair flight FR4978 incident to all 193 member states. The papers present what the ICAO describes as “operational details and technical analyses of the various measures and decisions undertaken.”

Giving a detailed timeline of how the events unfolded and what transpired between the pilots and Minsk air-traffic control, the report is descriptive in nature and doesn’t pass any judgment or make recommendations.

The ICAO released a statement regarding further actions based on the reported facts, saying,

“Council representatives will formally consider any further actions to be taken by ICAO as a result of the report’s findings during a meeting presently scheduled for 31 January.”

Ryanair flight FR4978, carrying dissident journalist Raman Pratasevich, was heading to Vilnius from Athens on May 23, 2021, and was forced to land in Minsk after local authorities claimed they had received information of a bomb aboard. Protasevich was later arrested upon landing.

ICAO Issues A Report Into Last Year’s Ryanair Belarus Diversion
The report presents straight facts without passing any judgments. Photo: Getty Images

Key findings

While the report presents straight facts without drawing any conclusions, many news publications having access to the papers have cast doubt on Belarus’ actions that day. Some of the key observations were the inconsistencies in Belarusian authorities’ accounts of emails containing bomb threats.

As noted by the Wall Street Journal, the ICAO report says that the Minsk ATC informed Ryanair about several other airports receiving bomb threats. But the document also says that no other airport reported receiving any such threat on that day of the flight and that those emails were spotted only days or even weeks later. Investigators could not establish how Minsk ATC came to know about other airports receiving similar emails.

This suggests that the only way Belarus could have known about the emails was if they were sent by Belarus itself instead of a militant organization, as mentioned by Belarusian authorities earlier.

The WSJ article also says that based on the ICAO documents, Belarus reported receiving a second email containing identical information about the bomb about half an hour after the first. Authorities in Belarus provided copies of both emails but failed to provide information about the email server or the files containing the messages in their original format.

Ryanair, Kiwi.com, Airline Tickets
The ICAO will recommend further actions in the days to come. Photo: Getty Images

Most detailed account yet

According to the ICAO, the report has been compiled by a special Fact Finding Investigation Team made of experts in aviation security, aircraft operations, air navigation, and international air law.

The organization launched its investigation in May last year and has been working ever since to give a detailed account of the incident on May 23, 2021. The organization had initially scheduled to release an interim report in June and a final report in September last year. But it needed more time to review the amount of data submitted and for additional approvals and certifications.

It’ll be interesting to see what actions the ICAO suggests based on these findings in the weeks to come.

Source: https://simpleflying.com/icao-ryanair-diversion-report/

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