As government and aviation industry leaders denounced the May 23 forced landing of Ryanair Flight 4978 in Minsk, Belarus, and cautioned airliners to avoid Belarusian airspace, the 36-member Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) scheduled an urgent meeting Thursday to discuss the incident.
ICAO said in a brief statement that it was “strongly concerned by the apparent forced landing” of the Ryanair flight and that the action could be a violation of the 1944 Chicago Convention, which laid out the principles governing international civil aviation.
ICAO’s initial statement was issued shortly after Belarusian authorities dispatched a MiG-29 fighter jet to force the airliner, bound from Greece to Lithuania, to land in Minsk, where they arrested a dissident journalist who has opposed Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and detained the journalist’s girlfriend. Some news reports said the pilots had been told that they needed to land because of a t…
