PARIS (Reuters) -Global aviation faces its biggest political crisis in years after Belarus scrambled a fighter and flagged what turned out to be a false bomb alert to detain a dissident journalist, prompting U.S. and European outrage.
Some European airlines immediately began avoiding Belarus airspace, a key corridor between western Europe and Moscow and route for long-haul flights between western Europe and Asia.
Flightradar24 tracking data showed at least one Ryanair flight avoiding Belarus, adding hundred of miles to its trip, and Latvian carrier airBaltic said it had decided not to use the country’s airspace “until the situation becomes clearer”.
Others, including Chinese and Turkish carriers, continued to fly over Belarus, which charges euro-denominated fees for use of its airspace.
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) said it had raised the incident with its 31 member states and an airline source said the agency had recommended “caution” over Belarus.
Aviation experts said a decades-old system of cooperation now faces a crucial test under the glare of East-West tensions.
The UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) said the incident may have contravened a core aviation treaty: part of the international order created after World War Two.
“ICAO is strongly concerned by the apparent forced landing
of a Ryanair flight and its passengers, which could be in
contravention of the Chicago Convention,” it said on Sunday.
But experts cautioned that calls from some Western politicians for the closure of Belarus airspace would be impossible to implement.
Under global aviation rules, neither ICAO nor any nation can close another’s airspace, but some, such as the United States, have the power to tell their own airlines where not to fly.
“It looks like a gross abuse of the (Chicago) Convention. It’s piracy,” Kevin Humphreys, a former Irish aviation regulator, said of the Belarus incident.
NO REGULATOR
Global airlines called for an investigation, backed by the European Union.
“We strongly condemn any interference or requirement for
landing of civil aviation operations that is inconsistent with
the rules of international law,” said the International Air
Transport Association (IATA).
“A full investigation by competent international authorities
is needed,” said IATA which represents about 280 airlines. Ryanair is not a member.
It was not immediately clear how such a probe would be organised.
Although highly regulated at a national level, and supported by globally harmonised rules to keep skies safe, aviation lacks a global policeman to avoid constant disputes over sovereignty.
While it has no regulatory power, ICAO sits at the centre of a system of safety and security standards that operates across political barriers but requires an often slow-moving consensus.
The rules are managed through the Montreal-based agency by its 193 members, including Belarus, and ICAO has only rarely become directly involved in inspecting matters such as airport security.
ICAO was thrown into discord over a wave of hijackings in the 1980s. Back then, the issue was whether to oblige countries to agree to let hijacked aircraft land on their soil.
Humphreys said it would be the first time in memory that the agency has had to ponder accusations that one of its own member countries had forced a plane to land, in what Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary called “state-sponsored hijacking”.
Belarus said on Monday its controllers had only issued “recommendations” to Ryanair pilots.
Russia accused the West of hypocrisy, citing the case of a Bolivian presidential plane forced to land in Austria or a Belarus jetliner ordered to land in Ukraine in 2016.
In 2013, Bolivia said President Evo Morales’ plane had been diverted over suspicions that former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden, wanted by Washington for divulging secret details of U.S. surveillance activities, was on board.
But aviation experts said the freedoms extended to civil airliners do not apply to presidential or state aircraft, which need special permission to enter another country’s airspace.
In the 2016 incident, Belarus national carrier Belavia said it had demanded compensation from Ukraine.
Lawyers say any probe or legal claim would also have to plough through a tangle of jurisdictions typical of liberalised air travel: a Polish-registered jet flown by an Irish group between EU nations Greece and Lithuania, over non-EU Belarus.
Under the 1944 Chicago Convention, each country has sovereignty over its own airspace, though the treaty prohibits any use of civil aviation that may endanger safety.
But the right to overfly other countries is contained in a side treaty called the International Air Services Transit Agreement, of which Belarus is not a member.
A separate 1971 treaty that includes Belarus outlaws the seizure of aircraft or knowingly communicating false information in a way that endangers aircraft safety.
Source: Economy - investing.com
