MINSK, January 18. /TASS/. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) did not mention the fact of interception and forced landing of the Ryanair plane in Minsk in its report, says Artyom Sikorsky, head of the Aviation Department of the Ministry of Transport and Communications of Belarus.
"The most important thing is that the investigation group accepted the proof provided by the Belarusian side that there was no interception, forced landing, or forced change of route of the Ryanair plane by Belarus," Sikorsky said Tuesday, according to BelTA.
According to the official, on January 17, the Aviation Department received a working document with the attached final report of the ICAO investigation group regarding the events that took place in the Belarusian airspace on May 23, 2021.
"We are carefully analyzing all elements of this report, looking for discrepancies that must be corrected," Sikorsky said.
He noted that the Ryanair plane’s flight recorders do not contain the record of the decision to travel to Minsk.
"The recordings of crew conversations in the cockpit were not saved because the crew did not turn off the flight recorders after landing in Minsk," Sikorsky explained. "Therefore, the crew did not save the objective control data and the audio recording at the moment when they decided to land in Minsk."
According to the official, "this looks strange."
Sikorsky noted that Belarus will continue to cooperate with ICAO.
"Together with a specialist, we plan to clarify the facts presented by the Belarusian sides, which were not cited entirely correctly, before the review of the report on January 31," he said. "We also expect that the Belarusian complaint on illegal actions of a number of countries, who imposed sanctions against our civil aviation, will be reviewed."
The incident
The Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius landed in Minsk on May 23, 2021, after a bomb threat was received. A MiG-29 jet fighter scrambled to escort the plane. The bomb threat was not confirmed. Later, it became known that the plane carried Belarusian citizen Roman Protasevich - a co-founder of the extremist Nexta Telegram channel. He was detained, along with Russian citizen Sofia Sapega. Following the incident, the EU barred Belarusian airlines from flying to and above the EU, and recommended European companies to avoid flying over Belarus. Over 20 countries closed their airspace for the Belarusian carrier.