Measuring the increase in air traffic between the Middle East and Minsk
As of November 24th 2021 an estimated 7698 migrants were brought by Belarus to the frontiers of the European Union (E.U.) [1]. In the midst of this orchestrated migrant crisis the New York Times reported that the amount of weekly flights from Middle Eastern locations to Minsk doubled from October to November 2021 in the following excerpt:
E.U. officials said they were analyzing air traffic to Minsk, the Belarusian capital, as potential evidence that Mr. Lukashenko was effectively orchestrating a flow of migrants toward E.U. countries. The timetable for the Minsk airport, effective Oct. 31, shows at least 47 scheduled flights per week from Middle Eastern locations, compared with no more than 23 flights per week on its previous schedule [2].
In this article Predicta Lab will retrace this analysis step-by-step in order to verify the veracity of its findings.
First it is necessary to designate appropriate periods for comparison. We will compare the last four weeks of October 2021 from the 4th to the 31st, to the first four weeks November from the 1st to the 28th (Figure 1).
Next we need to find all the existing flights connecting Minsk and the Middle East. We include the countries listed by the Encyclopedia Britannica for this region [4]. For this purpose we will only consider the direct flights.
FlightRadar24 [5] provides the list of destination available from the Minsk International airport but only for the week to come (Figure 2). We see this map does not display some of the connections mentionned in the article: from Syria, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Turkey.
Using the flight history feature of FlightRadar24 we can identify the flights coming from these locations. They also show that Egypt is a frequent connection to Minsk. Hence, for the period from October 25th to November 7th 2021, the Middle Eastern connections to Minsk were the following (Figure 3).
With these 19 connections, FlightRadar24 indicates that a total 410 flights were scheduled for the eight-weeks period. More specifically, 216 flights were set between October 4th and October 31st, and 194 flights were set from the 1stto the 28th of November (Figure 4).
In October there was an average of 54 flights per week from the Middle East to Minsk International Airport and in November this average fell to 48.5 flights. Hence the findings of European Union officials as reported by the New York Times seem to be incorrect. The weekly average did reach 47 and above in the first weeks of November but that was not an 100% increase compared to the previous month, rather it was a decrease of 10% (Figure 5).
However if we zoom back to analyse the traffic from the start of August, we see that indeed there was an increase in the frequency of flights coming from the Middle East to Minsk. In October the weekly average reached 54 whereas it was just 44.5 the month before and 37 in August. The number of flights peaked at 55 in the weeks 04/10–10/10 and 25/10–31/10.
In conclusion, as reported by the New York Times there was an increase in the frequency of flights coming from the Middle East to Minsk International Airport in the past months. The augmentation was gradual and spread across an eight-week period. It did not reach the extent reported: the largest increase in flights from one week is only 21%, between the 10/09–16/09 and the week 17/09–23/09.
Our findings rely on the data available on FlightRadar24 therefore if some flights from the Middle East to Minsk are not registered in the database, they will also be missing from our results. In addition the findings change significantly if Egypt is not counted as part of the Middle East. In that case 174 flights would need to be removed from the calculations and then the weekly average would be lower than the 47 flights announced by E.U. officials throughout the whole period.
[1] Stroombants, J.-P., (November 24, 2021). L’UE dégèle ses relations avec la Biélorussie, et va aider au rapatriement des migrants bloqués. Le Monde. Retrieved from https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2021/11/24/l-ue-degele-ses-relations-avec-la-bielorussie_6103411_3210.html
[2] Troianovski, A., Pronczuk, M. & Magdziarz, A. (November 9, 2021). West Accuses Belarus of Orchestrating Migrant Crises at Polish Border. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/world/europe/poland-belarus-border-crisis.html
[3] Reuters. (August 18, 2021) Poland sends troops to Belarus border as migrant numbers surge. Reuters. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/poland-sends-troops-belarus-border-migrant-numbers-surge-2021-08-18/
[4] Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. (9 February 2021). Middle East. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/place/Middle-East
[5] Flightradar24. (2021). Minsk International Airport. Flightradar24 Live Air Traffic. Retrieved from https://www.flightradar24.com/data/airports/msq/routes
