Turkish State TV: Turkey Forces Syrian Airplane to Land at Ankara Airport

[pampango]

17. There was no 'scheduled departure time' from Ankara since it was a nonstop flight to Damascus.

The only 'scheduled departure time' that flight had was from the airport in Russia. It is logical that that is the 'scheduled departure time' that the Russian airport spokeswoman was referring to.

The Russian government has confirmed that it was a nonstop flight. In addition, if the flight had been scheduled to stop in Ankara, there would have been no need for Turkish fighters to force it to land there.

There would have been no reason for the Russian embassy in Turkey to be...

...“disturbed” that the Turkish side did not inform its embassy that Russian citizens were being held at the airport, and did not allow diplomats to speak to Russian passengers for an eight-hour period, Foreign Ministry spokesman Aleksandr Lukashevich said in a written statement.

The passengers were not allowed to wait in the airport building, though they were occasionally allowed to leave the aircraft for the runway, and were not given food, the statement said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/12/world/middleeast/syria.html

If the flight was only on the ground for 20 minutes, why would the Russian embassy complain that the passengers were held incommunicado for 8 hours, not allowed to wait in the airport terminal and not given food? All that would have been hard to do in 20 minutes.