Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

lrt.lt

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 332 posts

Re: Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

#81

Post by tsimionescu »

namdnay wrote: post #22
sneak wrote: post #14

And, yet, we didn’t do this to Austria (or any of the other countries in Europe that cancelled use of the airspace) when the plane suspected to be carrying Snowden (but wasn’t, and was actually carrying a head of state) was forced down in Vienna based on a phone call from the US, to be swatted upon landing. Only the “bad guys” are terrorists when they do this. The double standard here in the west is astounding. The p…

Evo Morales' plane? From what I gathered it wasn't forced down in Austria, it's just that they were refused entry into the airspaces of several countries and the pilots weren't sure about the remaining fuel levels. Apparently the whole thing was a stunt by Julian Assange? Don't know how true that is Definitely a bit dodgy though

They could have also been refused access to the airspace of other countries sorrounding Austria if they had not chosen to land there. We don't know how the situation would have evolved.

And at "best", Assange could be the source of the (mis)information that Snowden may have been on board - the stunt itself was entirely pulled by the governments of France, Spain, Italy.

Re: Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

#82

Post by slezyr »

erentz wrote: post #40

It’s odd to me that the Ryanair flight yesterday was already closer to its destination of Vilnius than Minsk when it turned around. Ryanair said that the crew had been "notified by Belarus (Air Traffic Control) of a potential security threat on board and were instructed to divert to the nearest airport, Minsk". So they didn’t have an incident onboard? There were no hijackers claiming to have a bomb? Just ATC telling…

> It’s odd to me that the Ryanair flight yesterday was already closer to its destination of Vilnius than Minsk when it turned around.

Closer, but it had the wrong altitude for Vilnius. They were intercepted earlier. See this visualization

https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1396482250812841986

Re: Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

#83

Post by gostsamo »

ols wrote: post #76
gostsamo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, much smaller. I would agree that the EU's foreign policy is a disaster because of traditionally corrupted elites. The fact that the russian elites are even more corrupted is not an excuse.

EU doesn’t have a joint foregin policy. Foregin relations is still an intergovernmental matter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Representative_of_the_Uni...

Re: Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

#84

Post by vetinari »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #56
V-2 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well - they obviously had enough fuel to simply fly back to Russia if Snowden were actually on board. I'm not saying I support that action - I'm only pointing out these two incidents aren't quite in the same category.

It's also possible to disagree with both actions, which handily destroys the "But you did it first" attempted defence.

It is possible to disagree with both actions; but it doesn't destroy "but you did it first" defense. The precedent[1] happened and was generally accepted, so unless you want to go the quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi route, it is supposed to be acceptable defense.

The principal way is to reject that defense for all cases, including the first one.

[1] And not just Morales' plane; this happened more often than that. Morales and Snowden were just high profile.

Re: Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

#85

Post by ols »

erentz wrote: post #40

It’s odd to me that the Ryanair flight yesterday was already closer to its destination of Vilnius than Minsk when it turned around. Ryanair said that the crew had been "notified by Belarus (Air Traffic Control) of a potential security threat on board and were instructed to divert to the nearest airport, Minsk". So they didn’t have an incident onboard? There were no hijackers claiming to have a bomb? Just ATC telling…

This is a published rule of Belorussian airspace. If there is a terrorist threat onboard a plane in it the plane cannot leave the airspace and must land in Belarus. I don’t know if this is a common rule or not. Maybe it was intentionaly established for situations like this?

Re: Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

#86

Post by EvilEy3 »

csomar wrote: post #67
erentz wrote: post #40

It’s odd to me that the Ryanair flight yesterday was already closer to its destination of Vilnius than Minsk when it turned around. Ryanair said that the crew had been "notified by Belarus (Air Traffic Control) of a potential security threat on board and were instructed to divert to the nearest airport, Minsk". So they didn’t have an incident onboard? There were no hijackers claiming to have a bomb? Just ATC telling…

They sent a fighter jet. I don't think the pilot had much of a choice.

Why is this downvoted?

Re: Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

#87

Post by ngcazz »

maratc wrote: post #8

This will likely have no consequences to the regime in Belarus, while increasing costs to these Baltic airlines. A policy that might achieve something would be if the Baltic states, together with Poland and Ukraine, would close their airspace to Belavia planes, until the detained passenger is delivered to his destination in Vilnius. This will increase costs to Belarusian airlines, which would be a problem to the regi…

Don’t airlines pay for airspace utilization rights?

Re: Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

#88

Post by NicoJuicy »

redleader55 wrote: post #75
intricatedetail wrote: post #54

Nothing material is going happen as Germany needs that gas pipe. It's obvious from the news that this hijack was done together with Russia.

Germany insistence on closing nuclear power plants is doing Europe a lot of harm. It opens up one of the great powers of Europe to be controlled by Russia.

It's just making an option for energy cheaper.

Russia needs it too, since they can't sell with profits internally.

From my POV, it's just an additional option you get to sanction them with if they are acting in bad faith ( again) while getting cheaper options.

Re: Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

#89

Post by [deleted] »

golergka wrote: post #28
dekoruotas wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has also been set in motion: https://i.redd.it/elts5rgbg0171.jpg

European diplomats being "strongly concerned" have long become a running joke here in Russia: https://twitter.com/ISEUConcerned I sincerely hope that this statement finally gets backed up by some decisive action that can put real pressure on these dictators, but I don't get my hopes up.

[deleted]

Re: Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

#90

Post by toyg »

user-the-name wrote: post #60
sneak wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that they were refused entry into the airspaces of several countries Countries that minutes earlier they were cleared to fly through, and had planned to fly through. Had they ignored the refusal and proceeded as planned? Same ending: fighter jets. Let’s not pretend here that this is different.

Very much NOT the same ending. Had this theoretical situation happened, and had fighter jets been scrambled, they would have escorted the plane out of their airspace. They would NOT have forced it to land and arrested any passengers.

That's just speculation. Chances are they would have actually grounded the plane instead, because nobody would want to risk the plane falling down because of lack of fuel while being escorted.

Let's be honest here: Putin and Lukashenko can get away with this sort of shit because "we" first showed that it's acceptable behaviour. This is the risk of breaking unwritten rules on the international stage: sooner or later a bad guy will do it too, and you won't have the moral high ground. This journalist, and all the others who will have to take airspace into consideration from now on, are paying for the sins of Obama.

Post reply on HN