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Airlines divert flights away from eastern Ukraine

Posted on 18th July 2014

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This BBC story reports the crash of a Malaysia Airlines jet (flight MH17) carrying 295 people in Eastern Ukraine., probably shot down by the pro-Russian separatist rebels. In it, and also in this story, also on the BBC, is reported that the air route over the conflict zone in East Ukraine is now closed.

I do feel a little sorry for Malaysia Airlines, still suffering from the aftermath of the loss of flight MH370, which disappeared en route from Malaysia to China in March and still has not been found.

What really worries me is that airlines continued to fly over a conflict zone (there has been fighting there for quite a while) even after the shooting down of a Ukrainian military transport on 14th July 2014, as reported in this BBC piece.

People seem to have assumed that a commercial flight at 10,000m (about 30,000ft) would be out of range of any missiles that the rebels had, but the military transport was flying at 6,500m (21,325ft): if they have missiles that can reach 6,500m, they can also probably reach 10,000m. So why did the airlines and air-traffic control continue flying through this danger-zone when it was clear that the flights were at risk? Apparently saving a little money on fuel costs is more important than passenger safety.

I am sure that Malaysia Airlines will try to claim the cost of their lost aircraft on flight MH17, and the passenger compensation costs, from their insurance company. I do hope that the insurance company gives them a really hard time over that claim, because, in my opinion, it is at least in part Malaysia Airlines' fault.