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THE DOWNING OF a Malaysia Airlines jet over rebel-held eastern Ukraine has raised questions over why the company persisted in flying in conflict-zone airspace that many other Asian carriers had abandoned months ago.
The air corridor over Ukraine has always been a crowded one for flights between Europe and Asia – particularly Southeast Asia – and re-routing around the airspace would mean an increase in flight time and fuel costs.
Nevertheless, a number of major Asian airlines, including South Korea’s Korean Air and Asiana, Australia’s Qantas and Taiwan’s China Airlines, said Friday that they had started avoiding the area as much as four months ago, when Russian troops moved into Crimea.
“We stopped flying over Ukraine because of safety concerns,” Asiana spokeswoman Lee Hyo-Min said.
Korean Air moved its flight paths 250 kilometres (160 miles) south of Ukraine from March 3 “due to the political unrest in the region”, an official for the carrier told AFP.
A Qantas spokeswoman said its London to Dubai service used to fly over Ukraine, but the route was changed “several months ago”, while Taiwan’s China Airlines diverted its flights from April 3.
Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific and Pakistan International Airlines said their flight paths had changed “some time” ago.
‘Safe’ flight path?
Asked why Malaysia Airlines had not taken similar precautions, Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai stressed that international air authorities had deemed the flight path secure.
“The flight path taken by MH17 was approved by the International Civil Aviation Organization, and by the countries whose airspace the route passed through,” the minister told reporters in Kuala Lumpur.
“In the hours before the incident, a number of other passenger aircraft from different carriers used the same route,” he noted.
But ICAO spokesman Anthony Philbin said the UN agency, which is headquartered in Montreal, “does not establish routes” for airlines to follow.
Tyler said an airline’s choice of flight route was “very similar to driving a car – if the road is open, you assume it is safe. If it’s closed, you find an alternate route”.
According to the European flight safety body Eurocontrol, the doomed plane was flying at a level known as “330″, or approximately 10,000 metres or 33,000 feet.
The route had been closed to level “320″ but was cleared for those flying at the Malaysian plane’s altitude.
In a statement late Friday, the airline said MH17 had filed a flight plan requesting to fly at 35,000 feet which was “close to the ‘optimum’ altitude”.
“However, an aircraft’s altitude in flight is determined by air traffic control on the ground. Upon entering Ukrainian airspace, MH17 was instructed by Ukrainian air traffic control to fly at 33,000ft,” it said.
European and US airlines re-routed their flights as Kiev said flight MH17 was shot down in a “terrorist” attack, and a US official said intelligence analysts “strongly believe” it was downed by a surface-to-air missile.
Analysts were divided on whether carriers like Malaysia Airlines had been negligent in opting to continue flying over Ukraine.
“I just find it astonishing. I am absolutely flabbergasted,” said Geoff Dell, an air safety expert from the University of Central Queensland in Australia, told Sky News.
“If there’s trouble spots on the globe, then you take a decision to avoid that area,” Dell told Sky News.
“You don’t put your primary assets – your passengers, your crew, your airplane – at risk unnecessarily,” he added.
Assessing risk
Malaysia Airlines was certainly not alone in persisting with the corridor over Ukraine.
A host of Asian carriers, including Singapore Airlines, Air India, Thai Airways, Air China, China Eastern Airways and Vietnam Airlines, had used the same airspace up until Thursday’s crash.
And European airlines such as Lufthansa and Air France, as well as US carrier Delta, said they were only now taking the decision to avoid Ukraine entirely.
Gerry Soejatman, a consultant with the Jakarta-based Whitesky Aviation chartered flight provider, said every airline had its own level of risk assessment.
Flying above 30,000 feet is generally considered secure given the level of training and sophisticated weaponry required to shoot down a plane at that height, Soejatman said.
“Ten years ago you’d be an idiot to fly over Iraq below 15,000 feet, but over 30,000 feet was very safe, so it’s about the level of risk.
“I think this will send a message to airlines to have a closer look at conflict zones when they choose to fly over them and gain a better understanding of what equipment is on the ground,” he said.
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Cheaper to fly over it rather than around it! Sadly though this has come at a massive human cost! RIP to all
poor security awareness with an element of ignorance certainly must have played a part..
Calm down man! Who said anything about Iraq??
Some air authority, strange though that some companies had been completely avoiding the area for months, while it looks like some Asian airlines kept using the flight path, maybe a breakdown in communication?
U’d seriously wonder why they are allowed,
considering there is 2 set’s of animals fighting each other on the ground below..
It’s a popular route. 55 flights travelled the same route on the same day and it was used by airlines such as Jet Airways, Thai Airways, Pakistan International Airlines, Qatar Airways, Etihad, Emirates and Austrian Airlines. Flights regularly fly over conflict zones such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Northern Nigeria because most missiles don’t have that kind of range and the planes are at a height deemed to be safe. I mean, how likely is it that a group of rebels will have that kind of SAM equipment? This is a rare and unfortunate incident and asking why a flight was flying over a conflict zone at a previously safe (and normal) altitude is the wrong question to be asking. Imagine how few countries we could fly over if no one used flight paths above conflict zones
That’s assuming the rebels are responsible of course. It’s just as unlikely that the Russians or Ukrainians, who have that technology, would have been expected to use it on a commercial flight
There’s no accounting for stupidity Danny, if you handed a loaded gun to a child what would be the outcome you would expect ?
I fly to Australia quite often and it isn’n unusual to fly over war torn reguons. I have flown over both Iraq and Afghanistan and always the former soviet states.
You have to wonder what exactly does the downing of a passenger jet, originating from a country with few ties to Russia / Ukraine, achieve?
..your assuming it was intentional?
It doesn’t achieve anything. Why would the rebels carry out such an act intentionally, it would be sheer madness for them to do so. They had large numbers of the Ukrainian army trapped in the southeast area just along the border with Russia and it looked like they were going to inflict large losses until this incident occurred. This was a serious blunder that will be the death knell for their campaign as the Russians will close off the border and their supplies of weapons and they will be under huge international pressure to abandon their campaign.
Eh a passenger plane was shot down from the sky… No intent?
They thought it was a military jet
Doesn’t matter what it was, people were going to be killed. The intent was there.
Where is Frank? I am getting worried.
Franks has his thinking cap on. He is doing his best to come up with a conspiracy theory…
Lot more going on here than meets the eye!!!
Putins fingerprints all over that missile.
Like what Thomas?
Wreckage of MH17 packed with rotting corpses…… Bodies that had been dead for days.
MOSCOW — A top pro-Russia rebel commander in eastern Ukraine has given a bizarre version of events surrounding the Malaysian jetliner crash — suggesting many of the victims may have died days before the plane took off.The pro-rebel website Russkaya Vesna on Friday quoted Igor Girkin as saying he was told by people at the crash site that “a significant number of the bodies weren’t fresh,” adding that he was told they were drained of blood and reeked of decomposition.
Shut up frank.
So they flew a plane that went missing months ago to one of Europe’s busiest airports, filled it with rotting corpses, got a pilot/crew to fly it with no questions asked and blew it up over Ukraine…am I missing anything?
I think you covered everything Aus, maybe should have asked when magic mushroom season was over.
And somehow managed to hide the legitimate plane as well.
And what plane did the people board in Amsterdam.
According to a report, airspace over that region was closed from ground level up to flight level 320(32000ft) as the belief was that was the risk area, anything above was deemed safe to fly through as there was no knowledge of the capability to cause such a catastrophy and the flight level of 33000ft at which the flight was travelling at! Unfortunatly this was wrong!! Terrible thing and such a tragic loss of life!!! Who ever did this should be shot
of course, blame the victims
Silly question here. If you are flying to Dubai, why fly over the Ukraine?. Would you not be best flying over the Mediterranean and then over Egypt and then over Saudi.
I think that Saudi Arabia is considered too unstable for regular flights. Egypt hasn’t been flash, either, but that’s been mostly in Cairo. To get to Saudi, I think you’d need to go near Israel, Palestine and Syria, with plenty of land to air missiles in those regions, too.
Flights in and out of Shannon avoid Moyross
Somebody needs to take their MEDICATION & go lie down
have your say