Earlier Sunday, a commercial jet — scheduled to fly from Greece to Lithuania — made an emergency landing in Belarus. The intended destination of the Ryanair flight was Vilnius. Passengers and crew members ended up in Minsk instead. Radar data shows the plane flying through Belarusian airspace headed toward Lithuania. As the plane approaches the Lithuanian border, however, it makes a sharp right turn and heads toward the Belarusian capital.
Belarusian state media outlets say the diversion was prompted by a bomb scare, which caused local authorities to scramble a military jet to escort the plane to Minsk. After the plane landed, passengers and crew members underwent additional security screening and were subject to “verification activities.” Luggage and personal items were also subject to additional security checks.
Among the passengers was Roman Protasevich. The Belarusian journalist is the former editor of NEXTA, the opposition Telegram network, and has long been critical of the Belarusian political establishment. Protasevich, 26, has drawn particular ire from Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and was forced to flee the country last year after being placed on its most wanted list. Reports indicate that unlike his fellow passengers, who were eventually let go, Protasevich was arrested once the Ryanair plane landed in Minsk.
What exactly happened?
The picture of what caused the incident is getting clearer. Ryanair — which is one of the largest airlines in the world — issued a statement saying “nothing untoward” was found on its plane and it was eventually cleared to leave Minsk after several hours on the ground. “Ryanair has notified the relevant national and European safety and security agencies and we apologize sincerely to all affected passengers for this regrettable delay which was outside Ryanair’s control,” the airline added.
Matters were complicated by reports from Belarusian state authorities themselves that Lukashenko personally ordered a warplane to intercept the Ryanair jet. If true, this raises the question as to whether Lukashenko orchestrated a fake bomb threat to arrest one of his political opponents. An adviser to Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda has suggested this was in fact the case. Carl Bildt, the European Council’s co-chair on foreign relations, went one step further, calling the event “piracy — plain and simple.”
Scrambling jets to intercept commercial airliners isn’t common — but it happens
There have been seemingly similar incidents. In 2015, U.S. fighter jets escorted a commercial airliner after a bomb threat was made against the flight. The plane was subsequently cleared, with no explosive devices found. A similar fate befell passengers on a Qatar Airways flight a year before. British military jets escorted that plane to an emergency landing after reports of “a possible device on board.” The Federal Aviation Administration — the U.S. government agency tasked with watching the skies — says such action can be taken “in the interest of national security or defense.”
The FAA’s sentiment is consistent with international rules governing aviation safety. These rules — commonly known as the Chicago Convention — state that individual countries have “complete and exclusive sovereignty over the airspace above (their) territory.” Countries are also “required to take appropriate measures to ensure compliance in respect of safety and operational efficiency.”
The question is whether Belarus really believed there was a threat
It’s quite clear that if Belarus — which is signatory to the aforementioned rules — believed air safety was threatened, it could act accordingly to mitigate the threat. However, there are two ways in which Belarus could be in breach of these guidelines. First, if it manufactured the threat and forced the plane to land in Minsk. Alternatively, it could be in breach if it did not manufacture the threat but still forced the plane to land in Minsk for purposes that were not related to a threat.
We don’t know whether either is true, but there is evidence suggesting something strange may have happened. One potential problem for the Belarusian government is that the plane was closer to its intended destination, Vilnius, than it was to Minsk. Procedures generally dictate that in the event of an emergency, a plane should land as soon as possible. This should have meant having passengers and crew members met by Lithuanian, not Belarusian, authorities. The United Nations International Civil Aviation Organization has suggested Belarus’s actions may violate the Chicago Convention.
The question then arises as to what the pilot ought to have done. Airspace may fall under national jurisdiction, but pilots have the ultimate say on matters of air safety. For example, U.S. federal regulations clearly state that the pilot is “directly responsible for, and is the final authority as to, the operation of (their) aircraft.” During emergencies, pilots are also empowered to “deviate from any rule … to the extent required to meet that emergency.” This means that if pilots believe that following government instructions compromises the safety of their aircraft, they can disobey those instructions.
It is unclear what choices faced the crew of the Ryanair jet. Belarusian state media outlets say the pilot issued a distress call to air traffic controllers, but what prompted that call and whether the call had a legitimate basis remain murky.
Ashley Nunes is a senior research associate at Harvard Law School, where he studies how innovation affects economic growth.