MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia’s aviation authority on Thursday denied media reports that five planes flying over central Russia had emitted distress signals, saying the false information looked like it had come from a glitch in a foreign flight tracking website.
The TASS state news agency had reported on the incident earlier on Thursday.
Rosaviatsiya, Russia’s aviation authority, said in a statement that all five flights had taken place as planned and without any safety issues and that no distress signals had been detected.
It said media had originally cited information from the FlightRadar24 flight tracking website which Rosaviatsiya said had probably been generated by a system glitch.
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Gareth Jones)