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> Pilot: Again, this recommendation to divert to Minsk where did it come from? Where did it come from? Company? Did it come from departure airport authorities o

• gspr 5y ago
  Definitely not usual. As for the pilot being suspicious, I agree. The plane was also only about 30 km (=2-3 min flying time) from the Lithuanian border. Imagine if the pilot had decided to make the attempt. A Belarusian MiG violating NATO airspace?
  • djxfade 5y ago
    Russian airforces regularly violates NATO airspace in Norway. They never get any consequences for it, so why wouldn't they?
    • ddalex 5y ago
      Because a MiG firing on a NATO-country airplane that's in NATO airspace is definitely sound reason of invoking NATO Art 5
      • Judgmentality 5y ago
        There is an enormous leap between "violating airspace" and "shooting down a passenger plane while violating airspace"
        • davidw 5y ago
          The Russians, via their proxies in Ukraine, blew up an airliner a few years back.
          • jeltz 5y ago
            But only through carelessness. They thought they were shooting at a Ukrainian military transport plane.
            • baybal2 5y ago
              No carelessness, that's exactly what they were told to do: shoot down everything that flies. That was their explicit order.
              • nGW56Nak60 5y ago
                Russia had no reasons to take down that plane. The air space was open with planes flying over Donbas every day. A bunch of monkeys mistook it for a Ukrainian military plane and blew it up.
                • baybal2 5y ago
                  No, it was an explicit order, close down the airspace no matter what. This implied shooting everything that flies in the most literal sense. They knew fully they were shooting a civilian plane.
                  • goatsi 5y ago
                    In the celebratory Facebook post right after the shooting they claimed it was a military transport. In the intercepted cell phone call by a militant to a commander from the crash site they find out it's a civilian plane because they find the bodies and luggage. https://www.cnn.com/2014/07/18/world/europe/ukraine-mh17-intercepted-audio/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2014/07/18/world/europe/ukraine-mh17-int...
              • sofixa 5y ago
                Do you have a source for that? The official investigation concluded it was a mistake by poorly trained soldiers who thought they were downing a military An-26 plane. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17
        • yreg 5y ago
          Well what does violating the airspace in pursuit of the passanger plane achieve in this case? Of course the implication is that the MiG could have shot them down.
    • KingOfCoders 5y ago
      Any source?
    • complex1314 5y ago
      Would love some sources on that, because that would be a big issue. Russians regularly fly in international airspace along the Norwegian coast and are intercepted there by Norwegian fighters, but I have never heard about them actually violating Norwegian airspace. This is the closest I know of: https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/security/2019/02/11-russian-fighter-jets-made-mock-attack-norwegian-arctic-radar https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/security/2019/02/11-russia...
      • relix 5y ago
        You can find tons of data on that on Google, maybe not Norway but EU airspace. It happens about once a day. https://taskandpurpose.com/news/russian-aircraft-violate-european-airspace/ https://taskandpurpose.com/news/russian-aircraft-violate-eur...
        • wearywanderer 5y ago
          Headline: "NATO says Russian aircraft violated European airspace nearly 300 times in 2019" Article: "NATO jets intercepted Russian planes flying close to NATO airspace nearly 300 times in 2019, an alliance official said" These do not mean the same thing.
          • avs733 5y ago
            thank you. and to take this analysis a step further, claims of borders are also not static or a-political. (c.f. Kashmir). Wikipedia keeps a list of these [0]. On the other side of Asia, China makes a larger claim of maritime territory than the US recognizes...and the US Navy regularly sales through those waters [1]. I would encourage people to make a 2 by 2 matrix for soem perspective. Pick two country's...on one axis and put both on there as the 'violated' border and the 'violator' on the other. write headlines for all four boxes. and to be clear to anyone not reading the parent. The headline and article wearywanderer mentions are literal quotes. The headline is the headline, and the quote from the article is literally the first sentence. They don't match as a factual matter. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_territorial_disputes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_territorial_disputes [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-says-us-warship-illegally-enters-its-territory-s-china-sea-2021-05-20/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-says-us-warship-il...
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    • dragonwriter 5y ago
      Russian and NATO air forces regularly violate each others airspace (and the same with Warsaw Pact forces during the Cold War), but not while making even implied specific threats to civil aviation. (Also, though usually, not quite always without consequence, e.g, the Russian aircraft shot down by Turkey in 2015. To be fair, this was on an actual combat mission and not a routine intrusion, but then again neither would the Belarussian intrusion being imagined have been the routine kind.)
    • notahacker 5y ago
      There's a difference between countries routinely buzzing airspace with military aircraft to show they can and test the response, and entering airspace with military aircraft to threaten a foreign civilian airliner, which could reasonably be interpreted as an act of war.
  • njovin 5y ago
    I beg to differ. Controllers are not ultimately responsible for the safety of a plane and its passengers. The pilots not only had a right but IMO a duty to make sure they understood the situation and the request before making any decision to divert.
  • petre 5y ago
    The Belarusian MiG wouldn't have followed them into EU airspace. This was quite obviously a succesful social engineering attempt on the ATC's part to divert the plane to Minsk. This is why it's so outrageous and why the international community took such swift action.
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• 88 5y ago
  If you were told there is a bomb on board your plane, would you not be the slightest bit interested in some additional information about where that intelligence has come from? I suspect airlines get hoax bomb threats on a regular basis so pilots are keen to understand the source and veracity of the threats.
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• pc86 5y ago
  Not an airline pilot, but I am a private pilot. Yes, I think it's normal to ask for more information while complying with instructions from ATC, [their] workload permitting. And you're required to comply with ATC instructions except in an emergency (doesn't necessarily have to be declared).
  • cperciva 5y ago
    Would "being told you have a bomb on board" qualify as an emergency in this sense?
    • g_p 5y ago
      It would seem so, as that would be a situation which threatens the safety of the aircraft, which is a pretty good definition of an emergency. I've not gone through the detail yet, but depending on altitude of the aircraft at the time of the alert, and its speed, continuing onward to Lithuania may have made more sense for the crew - if they were at or near cruising altitude, you're talking about (say) 100 nm of lateral distance to execute the descent (for a normal descent profile). Under normal circumstances, you would be unlikely to want to divert to a new airport for this emergency landing, unless there was an issue like poor visibility or very limited emergency services at your destination - since diverting would likely require new descent and approach calculation and routing and briefing.
  • FabHK 5y ago
    You’re required to follow ATC instruction, yes, but usually in order to avoid other traffic and sequencing, not anything more. I mean, as a driver you’re required to obey traffic lights, but they would not normally impose a destination on you.
    • pc86 5y ago
      In Belarus that may be the case (I seriously doubt it though), but it is not the case in the US. You are required to comply with all ATC instructions. 14 CFR 91.123(b) - https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/91.123 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/91.123
• tomphoolery 5y ago
  If you're Russian? I would. No point in trusting any authority to be doing the right thing over there.
• zerkten 5y ago
  I haven't had time to follow this episode to the level of detail I normally would. I would expect a number of factors at play around hesitancy, not limited to: * Expectation of contact on other frequencies. * Minsk directly stating bomb on board with connection to Vilnius (may not be protocol) * Airport staff sent email (again, is this correct protocol?) * Message being that activation is over Vilnius (pilot may have accepted that, but also accepted that they had sufficient fuel to hold) * Pilot considering bomb may be activated by altitude (hence wanting to hold versus make immediate landing in place with relatively poor facilities) * Lack of NATO or other western agency involvement. Again, this is a sudden and extremely difficult situation, but pilot probably knows they fuel to make a more considered decision on actions. I look forward to learning more from this incident. You should be able to trust any controller is acting in good faith as a civilian navigator, but that's clearly not the case.
  • phkahler 5y ago
    >> You should be able to trust any controller is acting in good faith as a civilian navigator, but that's clearly not the case. Maybe the controller believed the information they had? I'm sure it wasn't their plan to do this, so someone told them something. But then we can move your statement to the next layer - the controller should be able to trust that someone giving them that kind of information is acting in good faith. Apparently not in Belarus.
    • FabHK 5y ago
      Which is one particularly heinous aspect of this whole saga btw - the loss of trust due to the abuse of the emergency protocols. A bit like abusing the Red Cross or a white flag to commit an attack in war. One just doesn’t do that.
    • zokier 5y ago
      If they genuinely believed the information, why were they so circuitous in answering the captains questions? For example > Pilot: Again, this recommendation to divert to Minsk where did it come from? Where did it come from? Company? Did it come from departure airport authorities or arrival airport authorities? > Controller: This is our recommendations. I'm more like to believe that the ATC controller was acting under duress
• jcrawfordor 5y ago
  PIC is ultimately responsible for safety of flight, not controllers or authorities. Given the unusual message which is essentially asking the pilot to declare emergency and oddly specific instructions to divert I don't think this is unusual. Normally in an emergency the pilot would divert to either the filed alternate airport or to another at the pilot's discretion, they would not be told specifically where to go (they might be offered a suggestion, they would often even ask the controller for suggestions since the controller has all the weather at hand, but it would be odd in the US at least for a controller to just directly tell a pilot where to divert as this is understood to be the pilot's call). The transcript gives the feeling the pilot was confused about why they were being given instructions to divert to Minsk which I would assume was not their filed alternate. Pilots in general and airliners especially do not like last-minute changes of plan because they are a good way for an accident to happen, that's why there are planned and filed alternates. Or put more simply: normally in an emergency the controller asks the pilot what they want to do ("say intentions"). The controller telling the pilot what to do is very weird and inconsistent with the general concept of the PIC as ultimately in command.
  • okamiueru 5y ago
    For people casually interested in this. What is PIC?
    • HiroProtagonist 5y ago
      Pilot in command
    • Judgmentality 5y ago
      Pilot In Command. On a commercial flight there are at least two pilots, and possibly three.
      • bombcar 5y ago
        To be more precise, it's the designation of the pilot who is responsible for the plane, who may or may not be the pilot who is currently physically flying the plane.
• dncornholio 5y ago
  Is it unusual for a human being having a human response? This request was obvious raising a lot of alarm bells. Nobody should follow order blindly. You act like a pilot is some sort of butler who should only do as followed? I don't think you can even ask if it's usual for a pilot because this request was anything but usual.
• quickthrower2 5y ago
  Anecdotal but Ryanair also really really don’t want to be diverting. I remember circling an airport for 2 hours with them waiting for very heavy snow to be cleared for a runway! Eventually they diverted.
  • billyhoffman 5y ago
    Is this specific to Ryanair? I imagine a plane not landing at the intended destination airport is much more disruptive than being late to that destination. E.g. passengers waiting at the destination airport for a flight involving that incoming plane, different airlines having only a fixed number of gates leased at a specific airport, etc