Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast20 Tammi 2022

January 20th - The Mysterious Case Of Ryanair Flight 4978

British and Irish airlines are some of the safest in the world but the case of Ryanair flight 4798 shows that it's not just crashes that airlines need to remain vigilant over when looking at safety.

Ryanair flight FR4978 was travelling from the Greek capital, Athens, to Vilnius in Lithuania on Sunday 23 May when it made an abrupt change of course over Belarus, some 10km (six miles) from the Lithuanian border. According to an unverified transcript from the Belarusian transport ministry, air traffic controllers told the pilot at 09:30 GMT "you have [a] bomb on board and it can be activated over Vilnius". Even though the plane was closer to Vilnius than Minsk, the pilot was told to divert to the Belarusian capital. At 09:47 the pilot declared an emergency. As the plane landed witnesses said Roman Protasevich, an opposition Belarusian journalist, was "super scared", and one quoted him as saying "I'll get the death penalty here". He had been charged in absentia with inciting mass protests, but Belarus's KGB security agency also placed him on a list of "individuals involved in terrorist activity". When the plane's 126 passengers disembarked, police arrested Mr Protasevich and Sofia Sapega, a Russian citizen studying in Lithuania. Three other passengers were listed as remaining in Minsk. The other passengers were allowed on to the plane, which flew on to Vilnius around seven hours later. And even now, aviation advisors and safety boards are not fully sure what happened.

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