After asking a question about the recent diversion/pirating of the Ryaniar flight in Belarus (that got closed, but has a nice answer), I got to wonder about how the pilot should have had behaved in that case (fictitious situation of a flight over Lithuania, Belorusian jets requesting it to fly back to Belarus).

What are the rules for a pilot of a civil plane when they are requested by a military plane (a fighter jet) to follow them, when the plane is from another country than the airspace?

I can understand that within an organization such as NATO, a Polish plane could fly over Germany to intercept a Singaporean plane (because of NATO agreements).

From the perspective of a civil airplane pilot - does it matter? In other words my questions are:

• is the pilot expected to make a decision about whether to follow a military plane at all? (= if they see a plane that requests them to do something, should they follow the requests no matter what?)
• is there any consideration of the airspace? (= should the pilot take into account the place they are above?)

I would like to highlight that I am interested in the rules on how a pilot must behave (and not acts of bravery or something like that).

After asking a question about the recent diversion/pirating of the Ryanair flight in Belarus (that got closed, but has a nice answer), I got to wonder about how the pilot should have had behaved in that case (fictitious situation of a flight over Lithuania, Belarusian jets requesting it to fly back to Belarus).

What are the rules for a pilot of a civil plane when they are requested by a military plane (a fighter jet) to follow them, when the plane is from another country than the airspace?

I can understand that within an organization such as NATO, a Polish plane could fly over Germany to intercept a Singaporean plane (because of NATO agreements).

From the perspective of a civil airplane pilot - does it matter? In other words my questions are:

• is the pilot expected to make a decision about whether to follow a military plane at all? (= if they see a plane that requests them to do something, should they follow the requests no matter what?)
• is there any consideration of the airspace? (= should the pilot take into account the place they are above?)

I would like to highlight that I am interested in the rules on how a pilot must behave (and not acts of bravery or something like that).