The war between Russia and Ukraine is approaching 50 days and the same time since Ukrainian airspace was closed to civil aircraft flights, due to the very high risk associated with such takeoffs. Thus, since February 24, the skies over the country are completely empty of passenger plane, but this “routine” has been silently broken.
On 2 April, an ATR 72-600 turboprop aircraft of the Ukrainian airline Windrose, branded UR-RWB , left the country at war in the most discreet way possible, having taken off from Lviv with the transponder off and followed at low altitude to the border with Poland. In the morning of that day, the aircraft landed in Warsaw.
According to data from the flight monitoring tool Radarbox , when it entered Polish airspace, the pilots turned on the transponder and the flight could be seen on the radar. At that moment, the plane was crossing at just 6,500 feet (about 2,000 meters altitude), very low, possibly to avoid being tracked by Russian forces.
Despite Lviv being very close to the border with Poland, the flight of less than 10 minutes to enter the neighboring country is considered to be very high risk, as, at the slightest detection by Russian forces, it could have been shot down.
There was no official statement regarding the flight, so all the information available is that recorded on the monitoring platforms. Likewise, it is not known if the plane had passengers or if it flew only with the pilots.
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