111–120 of 207 posts
Unbelievable that they'd go through this charade to arrest ~Snowden~ Protasevich.
Every time someone makes this comparison all it does is strengthen Lukashenko and Putin's propaganda machine. It doesn't help Protasevich, it doesn't help Snowden, and it doesn't create room for any positive political change.
Unbelievable that they'd go through this charade to arrest ~Snowden~ Protasevich.
> 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? Is it usual for a pilot to ask for all this information? From a "casual reader" perspective, it looks like the pilot really did not want to divert, but this might just be my reading.
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 (th…
The controller[s] were probably just as powerless as the pilot (considering the fighter escort). Get that plane to land, period. Were they reading from a script and did they improvise?
The pilot is not powerless at all in "usual" emergencies. Declaring an emergency allows them to do pretty much anything. Once you get hijacked by a fighter plane though, that's a different story.
Arguably once you are within firing range of two Mig-29's, the power dynamics changes slightly.
Don't forget that the country that started to divert planes to catch democrat dissidents was the United States. But Snowden wasn't in the plane. Details here: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/as-anger-toward-belarus-mou...
Would the pilot be able to verify with Ryanair HQ whether they know about the bomb threat they are being fed from ATC?
Of course when the recomendation is accompanied by a fighter jet one doesn't have a choice regardless, but I'm still curious whether they are at ATC's mercy for information.
The caa.gov.by news release has a much more complete (Belarusian-sourced) transcript than the edited Reuters one: http://caa.gov.by/ru/news-ru/view/1-203/ EDIT: copy-pasta from (Belarusian) source https://gist.github.com/SpComb/849b97bae720cb77ab4c43ef92dae...
You can not possibly trust their version.
Are airliners in contact with their airlines, via say satelite phone? Would the pilot be able to verify with Ryanair HQ whether they know about the bomb threat they are being fed from ATC? Of course when the recomendation is accompanied by a fighter jet one doesn't have a choice regardless, but I'm still curious whether they are at ATC's mercy for information.
Perhaps Russia has already done this in the past, and went undetected due to ISIS trying to take credit? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrojet_Flight_9268
Honestly, it's becoming harder by the day to view them as people. Ever since 2014 I've wonder if the world would simply be better off without Russia and it's satellite states. I've never met someone from these countries that was worthwhile. Not once.