Belarus dispatches MiG-29 fighter jet to corral RyanAir flight bound for Lithuania - - - - forcibly diverted to Minsk . . .
Was the plane over Belarus, though?
Yes: https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/fr4978#27cce9a2
To be precise that’s if you’re rejected for a visa - just to transit you don’t need one so it’s best not to apply.
(They kept the name KGB in Belarus.)
I had a formative experience regarding the game of chicken years ago. It might look very much off topic at first sight, but please read on and decide for yourself.
When I was in secondary school, bored teenagers repeatedly threatened local school bombings, causing the repeated evacuation of several schools. Never the one I went to school at. I later learned why from my father, a teacher at the school. The school did receive bomb threats just like the others. The school head did warn the police. After a short discussion with them, he firmly and politely informed them that our school would not be evacuated, and that was that. He was - and is, at 87- a quiet and soft spoken man, a well respected member of society, but definitely not afraid of a game of chicken.
My guess would be that the gentleman running the school in your example was widely respected and had a solid relationship with his appointing authority (school board, upstream executive, etc) -- they had his back.
Does Ryanair offer that type of confidence to pilots as commanders of their aircraft?
Korean Air Lines Flight 007 (also known as KAL007 and KE007)[note 2] was a scheduled Korean Air Lines flight from New York City to Seoul via Anchorage, Alaska. On September 1, 1983, the South Korean airliner servicing the flight was shot down by a Soviet Su-15 interceptor. The Boeing 747 airliner was en route from Anchorage to Seoul, but due to a navigational mistake made by the KAL crew the airliner deviated from its original planned route and flew through Soviet prohibited airspace about the time of a U.S. aerial reconnaissance mission. The Soviet Air Forces treated the unidentified aircraft as an intruding U.S. spy plane, and destroyed it with air-to-air missiles, after firing warning shots which were likely not seen by the KAL pilots.[2] The Korean airliner eventually crashed in the sea near Moneron Island west of Sakhalin in the Sea of Japan. All 269 passengers and crew aboard were killed, including Larry McDonald, a United States Representative from Georgia. The Soviets found the wreckage under the sea on September 15, and found the flight recorders in October, but this information was kept secret until 1993.