Snoopy wrote:
Pilot: We just need to quawk with the operation of the company, if there any frequency for that (unreadable).
ATC. Do you need RYR operation frequency?
Pilot: That is correct 1TZ.
Now wait, this baffles me. Question for the airline guys on this forum – don’t you have a means to contact the company?
Ryanair is too cheap to pay their pilots an ACARS box. This would have played out differently with most “real” airlines.
Rwy20 wrote:
This would have played out differently with most “real” airlines.
No room for Ryanair-bashing here.
ATC informs the pilot that a) a bomb is on board and b) it is to be activated remotely at the destination airport. That is kind of vicious, as in that case Minsk has actually been the closest alternate.
No airline in the world has a network of intelligence services that within reasonable time could positively confirm that this is a fake message from Belarus intelligence.
No airline manager in the world would take responsibility to act against the advice of the local responsible intelligence service and ATC and command (or only advise) the pilot to not fly to the nearest safe alternate but to an airport further away.
Even if it would have been a let’s say Lufthansa Airplane and even if the Crew would have reached Lufthansa operations via ACARS and even if the Lufthansa operations would have reached the German security services (all within the 30 Minutes where one needs a decision), no German security officer would have taken responsibility to advise the plane to not land at the nearest safe alternate – neither would the German Secretary for internal affairs (as responsible Secretary of State) would have take such a decision.
Just imagine they really had a bomb on bord that exploded while flying to a further away alternate and the responsible managers and public officials had to say: “Yes, we were warned but as we do not like Belarus we thought it is worth risking 150 lives”
Malibuflyer wrote:
ATC informs the pilot that a) a bomb is on board and b) it is to be activated remotely at the destination airport. That is kind of vicious, as in that case Minsk has actually been the closest alternate.
Yes, quite clever move by the Belarussian KGB.
Airborne_Again wrote:
The Belarussian ministry of civil aviation.
Which probably is why the accuracy of this is disputed.
I wonder if there will be any release by Ryanair or by anyone else to confirm or disconfirm it.
A smart move by the airline would have been to support their crew by immediately dispatching another aircraft to Minsk with a new crew and maintenance (to download the CVR file) on the grounds of “duty time” or “critical incident stress” or whatever. The pilots did get told they have a bomb onboard + armed fighter jets by their side so it wasn’t just another day at work. Mentally straining duty for sure!
Also, what about the bomb? That plane shouldn’t move again so quickly.
They did a great job flying the last leg that day after what must have been a really uncomfortable and stressful situation.
Snoopy wrote:
A smart move by the airline would have been to support their crew by immediately dispatching another aircraft to Minsk with a new crew and maintenance (to download the CVR file) on the grounds of “duty time” or “critical incident stress” or whatever
We are talking RyanAir 
their crew are on their own the moment they leave Stansted CTR !
SOP: you take the aircraft, you are the one to bring it home, or Dady O’Leary will be sad ;)
Ibra wrote:
We are talking RyanAir their crew are on their own the moment they leave Stansted CTR !
This might be as you say but that doesn’t make it right.
FRANKFURT(Adds Austrian Foreign Ministry statement, detail)
May 27 (Reuters) – Lufthansa’s Austrian Airlines said on Thursday it had to cancel a flight to Moscow from Vienna after not getting permission from Russian authorities for an alternative route following the suspension of flights through Belarusian airspace.
The move is the latest fallout from what Western nations have called hijacking and piracy by Russia’s ally Belarus on Sunday, which forced a Lithuania-bound Ryanair flight from Greece to land in Minsk, where a Belarusian dissident journalist on board was arrested.
In response, the European Union has urged its airlines to avoid Belarus and its airspace, but Russia has reacted by denying such carriers permission to fly to Russia, as with a Paris-Moscow Air France flight that was cancelled on Wednesday.
“The Russian reaction is absolutely incomprehensible to us,” Austria’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Russia’s denial of permission for the Austrian flight, adding that it was a disproportionate response to measures taken after Sunday’s “brutal act of air piracy”.
“The Austrian Foreign Ministry communicated this to the Russian ambassador today. The Austrian ambassador in Moscow also presented this position to Russia,” it said, calling on Moscow to clarify its position and adding that all flights over and to Russia should be able to continue without problems. (Reporting by Laurence Frost and Gleb Stolyarov Additional reporting by Francois Murphy in Vienna Writing by Christoph Steitz and Francois Murphy Editing by Emma Thomasson, William Maclean)
- – -
So, in order to enter Russia by air it seems Russia requires airlines to use Belarussian airspace only.
