"repeatedly attempted to get the crew to confirm on video that they had voluntarily diverted to Minsk"
English is not my first language - is this really the meaning of „coerced“? I would have used persuaded or lured.
He said the captain "repeatedly" asked Minsk ATC to provide an open line of communication back to Ryanair's operations control centre in Warsaw, but was told: "Ryanair weren't answering the phone"
Wouldn’t it be great to have a satcom link in such a situation?
We need to have an outcome where the European and the UK authorities, hopefully assisted by international partners, receive appropriate assurances from the Belarusian and/or Russian authorities that this will never happen again.
Aaah guarantees from europes last stalinist dictatorship… that’s definitely cheaper then! That‘ll do it!
… the captain was put under "considerable pressure" to land in Minsk. "He wasn't instructed to do so, but he wasn't left with any great alternatives," he told the committee.
Can we drop that “forced at gun point” propaganda now? Thank you. An airplane became prey of a stalinist regime because of lack of state of the art means of communication with their operations centre. That‘s it. If you are cynical you could indeed congratulate the secret services of Belarus.