January 20th - The Mysterious Case Of Ryanair Flight 4978

Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast

The Independent

Places & Travel, Leisure, Society & Culture

3.6 • 628 Ratings

🗓️ 20 January 2022

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Simon Calder, welcoming you to my independent travel podcast, bringing you the latest news on travelling, whether you're just dreaming of a great escape or actually away and I hope having the time of your life.
0:14.8	Today, I am talking about aviation safety and in particular the extraordinary tale of the Ryanair flight that
0:25.3	diverted to Minsk in Belarus last May. Of all the many virtues of travelling life in the 21st century I think probably the greatest is
0:40.0	aviation safety this month it is sadly the 33rd anniversary of the Kegworth
0:48.0	crash in which a British Midland jet came down just beside the M1 with the loss of life as a result of an engine
0:59.0	failure and then the pilots shutting down the wrong engine. It was a terrible tragedy from which
1:04.5	aviation, as it always does, learnt from what had gone wrong and what could be avoided in the future.
1:13.6	That was the last time a UK airline was involved in a fatal accident,
1:20.6	a remarkable record that is echoed actually by Irish airlines, including Ryanair, which is Europe's biggest budget airline,
1:31.4	and which, in terms of passengers flown without an incident, a fatal accident, is the safest in the world.
1:41.0	It is also the airline that was involved in a fairly routine flight that took off on
1:48.1	the 23rd of May last year going from Athens to Vilnius. On board was a Belarus dissident, Roman
1:55.9	Prostovic. Now the plane flew normally over Greek, Bulgarian, Romanian and Ukrainian airspace.
2:05.6	But then, and for this, I am going to the International Civil Aviation Organization report
2:12.6	into the incident, which is full of gaps, they cheerfully admit.
2:19.4	Well, not very cheerfully, actually.
2:28.4	But we do find out that the aircraft had been in Belarus airspace for just 24 seconds before the pilots were warned by air traffic controllers of a bomb threat.
2:37.7	Now, bomb threats against aircraft are unfortunately quite common and there are procedures basically where the credibility of the threat
2:45.7	is assessed. Generally the threat is regarded as green.
2:51.6	No credible threat exists.
2:53.6	Diversion not required continue to destination as planned.
2:57.6	Then, in the way of these traffic lights, credibility uncertain, the flight will continue to the planned destination or divert to a suitable alternate.
	...

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