PARIS/LONDON: The head of a group representing most global airlines welcomed an international investigation into the forced landing of a Ryanair jetliner in Belarus and said the world must ensure such incidents never happen again.
"That sort of behaviour is completely unacceptable and must be strongly condemned. We must have measures to ensure that can't happen again," Willie Walsh, director-general of the International Air Transport Association, said.
The United Nations' International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) agreed on Thursday to investigate the forced grounding.
Belarus has said it was responding to a bomb threat. Walsh said evidence suggested the threat had been manufactured.
"I don't think the world could have just stood back and allowed what happened last Sunday to go by without some form of protest," Walsh said in an interview.
Many airlines have since re-routed around Belarus, which straddles a corridor linking western Europe to Moscow, or beyond to Asia.
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has advised domestic and foreign airlines to avoid Belarusian air space.
Asked about the impact on airlines of having to fly around Belarusian air space, Walsh said it was "not unmanageable but difficult" during the pandemic when many long-haul flights have far fewer passengers than usual.
In a more normal period of demand, route changes can require more fuel which might mean allowing fewer passengers or less cargo on board, he added.
Any further efforts by Belarus' closest ally Russia to prevent airlines from using its own air space to bypass Belarus would be more worrying, he said.
Russia's federal aviation agency Rosaviatsiya has notified airlines that changes to routes from Europe to Russia due to a political row over Belarus may result in longer clearance times, issues described by the Kremlin on Friday as "technical".
The RBC news outlet reported late on Thursday that Russia would allow European flights to arrive and depart via routes that bypass Belarusian airspace despite Moscow previously denying access to two carriers that skirted Belarus en route to Moscow.
Meanwhile, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, who's under increasing pressure from the West and EU sanctions, is heading to Russia on Friday to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The two leaders will discuss further developing their countries' ties when they get together in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, according to the Kremlin. Friday's meeting will be the third between the two leaders already this year.
Lukashenko says that he will also discuss the consequences of EU and US sanctions, which are currently hitting Belarus especially hard.
Minsk already owes Moscow billions, but Putin has recently repeatedly emphasised that the Kremlin would continue to support Lukashenko.
The meeting is taking place less than a week after Belarus forced a passenger plane to make an emergency landing in Minsk, saying there was a bomb threat aboard, which turned out to be an unfounded claim. During the incident, Belarus sent a fighter jet to accompany the Ryanair flight.
Roman Protasevich, a 26-year-old dissident journalist, and his partner were taken into custody after the landing, prompting a raft of measures by the EU, including restricted access to the bloc's airspace for Belarusian carriers.
Lithuanian authorities announced on Friday that they have questioned the crew and 90 percent of the passengers who were on board at the time. The investigation of the plane, which remains at the airport in Vilnius, is still ongoing, according to the BNS news agency.
There had been more than 100 passengers on the plane at the time. They were delayed more than eight hours due to the plane diversion.
It was unclear on Friday whether airlines that were following the EU's recommendation were being blocked from landing in Russia.
Some airlines, such as Air France, reportedly had to cancel flights after alternative routes that avoided Belarus was not approved.
The EU's top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said that he did not know yet if Russian authorities were making the decision case-by-case or had implemented a general rule, and would wait before taking any action.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov spoke of "technical problems" after the EU's decision but said authorities were working to sort them out.
The Rosaviazia aviation authority said it was taking longer than usual to approve requests because more than usual had been coming in.
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