Pressure grows for sensitive Belarus air safety probe

Pressure is growing for an impartial safety probe into the forced landing of a Ryanair jet in Minsk, including review of the plane’s black boxes - a move fraught with sensitivities over access to evidence, aviation experts said. International condemnation of the scrambling of a fighter jet and the use of what turned out to be a false bomb alert to divert the flight to Minsk and detain a dissident Belarusian journalist has focused mainly on accusations of state-sponsored hijacking and rights violations. But Europe’s aviation regulator said on Wednesday that Belarus’s actions had also cast doubt on its ability to provide safe air navigation, and some international officials are pushing for an investigation close to the type seen when a plane crashes or something goes technically wrong. Opening such an investigation would test a system of global co-operation that has generally worked smoothly for decades, aviation experts said. That’s because under a global protocol called Annex 13 Belarus, as the “state of occurrence”, would have the right to lead any ordinary safety probe with “unrestricted authority” over key evidence such as the plane’s black boxes. “The state of occurrence has the lead,” said Michael Daniel, a former U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) accident investigator. “However they are also the prime suspect in this case.”<br/>