TORONTO (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th September, 2021) The meeting of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Council where a report into the Ryanair flight incident in Belarus is being delivered has begun, ICAO spokesperson William Raillant-Clark confirmed to Sputnik on Monday.
The report into Belarus' grounding of a commercial airplane traveling from Greece to Lithuania over a fake bomb threat is one of the items listed on the agenda published by the ICAO ahead of the virtual meeting.
"Yes, it is," Raillant-Clark said in a statement responding to a question on the status of the meeting.
On May 23, Ryanair flight FR4978 made an emergency landing in Minsk after pilots were alerted to a bomb threat, which later turned out to be false.
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.
The ICAO Council has launched a fact-finding investigation into allegations of Belarus violating flight security protocols by diverting the plane.
The international aviation body expects to complete the investigation into the Ryanair incident by November, when the current ICAO Council session expires.
