A pilot aboard a Ryanair jetliner forced to land in Belarus over the weekend repeatedly questioned air-traffic controllers about their request to reroute the plane to Minsk amid a purported bomb threat, according to a partial transcript released Tuesday by Belarus’s government aviation agency.
The transcript hasn’t been independently verified. Several pilots and security experts asked to review the accounting by The Wall Street Journal said it appeared to be genuine, based on the terminology and back-and-forth typical of such conversations. Some said the Ryanair pilots, who repeatedly asked for clarification about the airport at which they were being asked to land, seemed surprised by the request to divert to Minsk.
“They definitely hesitated,” said Ben Berman, a retired U.S. airline captain and former accident investigator who is now an airline safety consultant. “They didn’t just accept the statement of the controller.”
Dublin-based Ryanair Holdings PLC declined to comment.
Belarus released the conversation as part of an effort to support the country’s version of events in the unusual incident. The government of President Alexander Lukashenko has said it received a warning that a bomb was aboard the plane, which was in Belarus airspace at the time; notified the plane’s pilots; advised it to reroute to Minsk; and scrambled a jet fighter to escort it there.
