[throwaway21_]

Nope, that airplane was in Belarus airspace so it's up to them to decide if they want it landed or not. If you don't like it nobody is forcing you to fly over Belarus. Their airspace - their rules.

Same thing happened on 9/11 - US chose do land all aircrafts, and in case that anyone disobeyed orders it would be promptly shot down - foreign planes or not, it didn't matter in slightest.

[newacct583]

First, no, there are no international treaties about forcing aircraft to the ground. That is an extraordinary thing done in circumstances of immediate safety concerns. There are, however, treaties that have been in place about unfettered airspace transit access (no idea which exactly Belarus is a signatory to), and this was pretty clearly in violation of those. There is no "you're in our airspace so we do what we like" rule in international air travel, and that's ridiculous to suggest.

Second: they let the plane in on a flight plan that clearly took it to Vilnius. Again, that's false pretenses.

Per the analogy above: consider a consulate telling someone "sure, you can board this plane without your passport, it's fine" and then arresting the person for a visa violation on landing.

[throwaway21_]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achille_Lauro_hijacking#Interc...

Looks like they learned from the best.

[newacct583]

The whataboutism here is just insane. Ronald Reagan OK's an interception of a plane containing a known terrorist 36 years ago and now it's OK to hijack airliners anywhere in the world for any reason?

Yeah, this is trolling.