ICAO Team Arrives in Minsk to Investigate Ryanair Incident, Belarusian Transport Ministry Confirms

MINSK (Sputnik) - A team of experts from the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) has arrived in Belarus to investigate an incident involving the emergency landing of a Ryanair flight at Minsk Airport in early May, the Belarusian Transport Ministry said on 23 August.

"Today a working meeting was held with representatives of the ICAO group to investigate the facts of the landing of the Boeing 737 of the Ryanair airline at the Minsk National Airport", the ministry said in a statement.

"Following the visit, the [ICAO] commission will make changes to the preliminary report, which is planned to be prepared in September 2021. The final report will be presented by November of this year", the ministry added.

On 23 May, a Ryanair commercial airplane travelling from Greece to Lithuania made an emergency landing in Minsk over a bomb threat that turned out to be fake. Two passengers on board the aircraft, Roman Protasevich, the founder of a Telegram channel which Belarus designates as extremist, and his girlfriend, Russian national Sofia Sapega, were detained during the stopover. After the incident, the European Union blocked Belarusian airlines from flying to the bloc and stopped carriers from its 27 nations from using Belarusian airspace.