The spouses living in Klaipeda arrived home much later than planned.
The plane made a sudden turn
Doctor G. Mikalauskas says that it should have been an ordinary trip home by plane, which did not seem to promise anything bad. The pilots of the plane flying from Athens had already urged the passengers to prepare for the landing, soon the plane had to land in Vilnius.
Suddenly the plane made a quick 180-degree turn and a message sounded that they would land Minsk.
That anxiety only grew when airplane passengers saw many fire tanks and ambulances at the airport through the windows. “Then I really thought the plane broke down,” says the interlocutor.
“At that time, some passengers thought that it was due to bad weather in Vilnius, I thought it was due to some engine failure. It was only later, already on disembarkation, that the flight attendants said the pilots had been notified of the bomb on board. I think it’s good that they didn’t tell the passengers, because there were all kinds of anxiety and guesses, “G. Mikalauskas recalls.
The last members of the crew got off the plane.
He tried in every way to dispel fear
From the plane, passengers were told to climb 5 each, planting them all in police cars and taking them to some sort of parking lot, which was immediately surrounded by soldiers and police. He ordered to help with the luggage, which was started by the border guards with the dogs. Someone’s belongings were dumped on the ground, the doctor thinks it may have been the baggage of detainee Romanas Protasevičius.
All passengers were later taken to a room without windows, which was also guarded by soldiers. Here people were checked with a metal detector, their documents were checked, all of them were filmed. Inspectors even touched everyone from head to toe with their hands, even taking off their socks…
“We stayed in that room for three hours without water and toilets, there was not even a place to sit,” G. Mikalauskas recalls. Although people asked what awaited them next, no one provided them with any information. And people whispered to each other that they might be destined to be hostages in negotiations between the two countries…
“Everyone was trying to dispel fear and hard thoughts in their own way: who drank beer, who laughed or otherwise encouraged themselves,” the doctor recalls.
A fighter was accompanied to the wall
Later appeared Romanian and Austria diplomats, they asked if the passengers had any complaints. However, according to G. Mikalauskas, the passengers were afraid to complain, because the soldiers of a foreign state were walking around with rows of medals on their chests…
The fears of the passengers subsided only when they were boarded the plane after reading the first reports of the incident, which had already appeared in the media. Everyone has realized that this unprecedented state act of terrorism is already being followed by the whole world.
But even when the air took off, the stress did not go away, because the fighter of the Belarusian regime accompanied the plane with the departing passengers until Lithuanian states walls.
Like a return to Soviet times
Doctor G. Mikalauskas says that he has never thought before that similar things can happen in the 21st century: someone can just hijack a plane and “pick up” its passengers. It was something unheard of and hard to imagine today. Those hours of uncertainty in a foreign land were like going back in time to the Soviet machine.
“It simply came to our notice then. In those hours, we clearly felt how close we are to death and how fragile human life is in general. We have realized that when we are involved in our daily routine, we often underestimate and do not realize how much we have, we do not value freedom, ”says a doctor who has experienced a real nightmare.
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