Hakob Chagharyan, former adviser to the RA Prime Minister on aviation, wrote on his Facebook page.

“About the Turkish Airlines TK-336 Istanbul-Baku flight over Armenia.

I have been asked several times today to evaluate the performance of this flight.

As this reality can become a source of political speculation, I will explain its aviation – legal aspect with this post.

Armenian airspace has never been closed to Turkish civil aircraft.

As well as the Turkish airspace has never been closed to Armenian aircraft.

All flights of Armenian airlines to Europe and Western Middle Eastern countries (Israel, Jordan, Lebanon…) were operated through Turkish airspace.

The Armenia-Azerbaijan air corridor was closed on the initiative of Azerbaijan, if I am not mistaken, for about 15 years.

During that time, an Azeri plane bound for Baku landed in Yerevan due to bad weather conditions, and Aeroflot’s Moscow-Yerevan plane landed in Baku for the same reasons.

And in any case, the “plane” and the “passengers” continued their flight absolutely without any problems, successfully, without any obstacles, in case of regulation of the weather conditions of the destination airport.

These are international aviation regulations. Where there is not and there can be no political background. When there is no landing airport, for whatever reason, pilots can decide during the flight to land at any landing airport

The plane cannot stay in the air indefinitely. And civilian passengers should not die because of the war between the two countries.

The flight was made after Azerbaijan stopped blocking the above-mentioned airway (or especially for Turkish), by the airline that has the right to fly over the territory of the Republic of Armenia.

The issue is out of the political field.”