Evo Morales grounding incident

Spain, France, and Italy (red) denied Bolivian president Evo Morales permission to cross their airspace. Morales's plane landed in Austria (yellow).
President of Bolivia Evo Morales in 2011

On 1 July 2013, president Evo Morales of Bolivia, who had been attending a conference of gas-exporting countries in Russia, gave an interview to the RT television network in which he appeared predisposed to offer asylum to Edward Snowden.[1] The day after his TV interview, Morales's Dassault Falcon 900 FAB-001, carrying him back to La Paz from Moscow, took off from Vnukovo Airport, flew uninterrupted over Poland and the Czech Republic, but then unexpectedly landed in Vienna, Austria.

According to Bolivia, the flight was rerouted to Austria when France, Spain and Italy[2] denied access to their airspace, allegedly due to suspicions that Snowden was on board.[3]

  1. ^ El Mercurio On-Line (1 July 2013). "Evo Morales se abre a ceder asilo a Edward Snowden si lo solicita". El Mercurio On-Line (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 6 July 2013. Retrieved 16 March 2014.
  2. ^ Sol-Autor Lusa (9 July 2013). "Portas: Portugal autorizou o sobrevoo de Morales". Sol (in Portuguese). Archived from the original on 27 March 2014. Retrieved 16 March 2014.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference bbc-morales-vienna was invoked but never defined (see the help page).