"Man In Mask Searched Plane": What's Known About Passenger Taken Off Flight

6 to 8 people were taken off the board of Belavia, flying along the route Minsk - Munich.

On January 24, the plane flying from Minsk to Munich was turned back over Wroclaw and landed in Hrodna. At least six people were taken off the liner. Portal tut.by collected information, which is currently known about this incident.

So how many people were taken off the plane?

According to the passengers of this flight, from 6 to 8 people were taken off the board. "A man in uniform came in and said: "I'm going to call some names, you'll take your stuff and come with us." He named six people, but in fact they are two families,'" - one of the passengers said. According to him, two couples were asked to go out, all of them were about the same age - about 50 years old. At that one of the couples flew together with two girls, who "looked 12 to 16 years old". They were also taken out of the plane, the passengers report. "These people were taken out. The military (as the passengers call those in uniform. - Ed.) opened several luggage shelves near the places where those people were sitting and asked whose luggage was there, not looking at what was inside," - the passenger said.

According to him, after a while two more names were announced, those passengers were also asked to leave the board. " About 20 minutes later, a man with his face covered with a scarf came in. They told everyone to come out with their bags, not to leave anything. We got off to the bus, but it didn't go anywhere, just closed the doors, we were standing there. At that moment we could see that the masked man was searching the plane. He came back and asked who was sitting in seat 6A. A foreigner responded. They gave him a phone, which he had forgotten in his chair," - one passenger recalls.

The names of those who had to leave the plane were announced via loudspeaker. Two namesakes of former members of the "Council of the Republic," heads of large enterprises, were among them.

At that one passenger noticed that those who were taken off the flight were staying together before the departure, communicating. "They were having a cultural vacation. They were spending their pleasure time in a civilized way, a little bit noisy, but everything was within the framework of decency," - the passenger said.

What do the guards say?

Passengers report that between 8 and 10 people have been on the board. According to their assumptions, it could have been representatives of the Interior Ministry, KGB and the Border Committee. But none of these agencies managed to comment on the situation promptly: neither to confirm the presence or absence of their representatives on board, nor to give the number of passengers removed from the flight.

Representatives of Belavia and Hrodna airport were also unable to provide any comments. By the way, passengers of this flight have a lot of questions to the airline.

What are the passengers' questions to Belavia?

Why weren't we fed? Passengers note that they were not fed during the flight. At that, it should be taken into account that the departure of the flight, judging by the service of tracking routes and movement of liners, was delayed by about 3 hours. Then there was a return to Hrodna, and the plane arrived in Munich only at 21.01 Minsk time (19.01 German time). That is, the flight lasted about 5.5 hours, and taking into account the delay in Minsk - about 8.5 hours. Usually the flight time from Minsk to Munich is about 2 hours. Passengers wonder why they were not fed.

Why haven't they announced their return to Belarus in advance? " After 1.5 hours from departure from Minsk, the plane turned around. We realized from the GPS that we were over Wroclaw and turned back towards Minsk. None of the flight attendants announced this information. They just quietly turned back, - one of the passengers said. - I didn't want to raise panic among people either, I said nothing. The pilot announced 15 minutes before the landing that due to a technical malfunction we had to make a landing in Hrodna: technicians will make sure that everything is okay, we will be refueled and we will fly along. It is unclear why not in Wroclaw, if there were really some technical problems."

So the taken off passengers didn't fly any further?

The flight continued without them. "After refueling and searching the plane, they let us in the aircraft. The pilot announced that the 'malfunctions' had been corrected, we flew to Munich, but without the taken off people," - one of the passengers said.

According to unconfirmed information, Piotr Rudnik, who served as chairman of the Mahiliou regional executive committee from December 2008 to December 2014, and Mikhail Kryshtapovich, who was a member of the "Council of the Republic", were taken off the B2 899 flight.