Why was MH17 Flying Over The Conflict Region?

There is a simple economical reason for so many international flights between Western Europe and South-East Asia flying over the easternmost part of the Ukrainian airspace: Ukraine has signed IASTA, unlike the neighbouring Belarus and Russia.

From Wikipedia article on Freedoms of the air:
Countries that are not signatories of the IASTA charge overflight fees as well; among them, Russia, is known for charging high fees, especially on the transarctic routes between North America and Asia, which cross Siberia.[11] In 2008, Russia temporarily denied Lufthansa Cargo permission to overfly its airspace with cargo ostensibly due to "delayed payments for its flyover rights".[13] European airlines pay Russia €300 million a year for flyover permissions for its airlines.[13]
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Presumably, Russia charges the airlines by mileage, therefore they try to minimise flyovers by using as much of the 'free' Ukrainian airspace as possible.
 
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Soulfly said: ↑
This is the main arguing point here. A modern, properly trained military would most likely not have made this mistake. Or it probably would have already happened before.
Are you saying something like this hasnt happened before?

I actually agree with Gary on this one.. modern military or not it HAS happened and just in the last couple decades. In 1988, the USS Vincennes fired upon and shot down a civilian airliner.. in this case though the Vincennes IDd the flight as an F-14 because they said it was flying with an IFF used by the Iranian Airforces., which were only flown by the US and the Iranian Air Force.. so its still very VERY possible it was a case of mistaken identity IF the airliner didnt show up on the IFF or had the wrong IFF.
 
Infowars is reporting that the flight was ordered to change its route. Perhaps this explains why the flight was different than the prior 10 Malaysian flights, and ended up over the conflict zone.

http://www.infowars.com/pilots-heard-ukrainian-air-traffic-control-order-mh17-to-change-route/

There were three aircraft in the same airspace. ATC probably did it to maintain lateral separation. If there was a trigger happy person at the BUK launch control then the Singapore Airlines plane would probably be the one hit if MH17 was further away.
 
@Libertarian

Hi. There is a misunderstanding in these flightroute data. You are referring to the data from Flightaware.com, which does not show the real flight path, due to the fact that they do not have any ADS-B receivers in the Ukraine and therefore have to rely on estimated flight path in that particular area.
You can check this out directly on their Homepage: http://de.flightaware.com/adsb/coverage

Flightradar24.com on the other Hand has Ukraine fully covered with ADS-B receivers and if you go look for the prior flightpaths from MH-17, you will find out that it took same route as on 5 of 7 days before. Where Flightradar24 can track, is displayed here: http://www.flightradar24.com/how-it-works/

Reason for this might be that Flightaware is an US-based Company while Flightradar24 is swedish based. So Flightaware has better coverage of the USA and Flightradar has better coverage in Europe.

Cheers,
Yoda
 
Infowars is reporting that the flight was ordered to change its route.

Nope.....they didn't "stray" far from the original Flight Plan. Diverting due to weather ahead, is VERY common...and this is what happened.

"InfoWars: is NOT a good site to "reference"....sorry.

ANY airline pilot (myself included) can explain IN DETAIL and AT LENGTH the normal procedures when flying internationally.
 
The infowars report is based on an indian article
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...Airlines-Flight-MH17/articleshow/38702536.cms
which does not suggest any deliberate attempt to put in the way of harm or anything particularly out of the ordinary.
Minutes before the crash caused by a missile strike, the AI pilots had also heard the controller give the Malaysian aircraft MH17 what is called "a direct routing". This permits an aircraft to fly straight, instead of tracking the regular route which is generally a zig-zag track that goes from one ground-based navigation aid or way point to another. "Direct routing saves fuel and time and is preferred by pilots. In this case, it proved fatal," said an airline source.
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Infowars leaves out that last sentence which establishes it as fairly routine.
They also say this, which is untrue*.
Questions have abounded as to why flight MH17 pilots were re-routed to overfly eastern Ukraine when most other major airlines have avoided the airspace for months. Data shows that MH17′s previous ten flight paths before the shoot down avoided eastern Ukraine entirely.
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Infowars are spin doctors for Russia on this one.
I wonder if the direct routing from ATC was in response to a request for it from the pilots themselves?

*half-true -
Around 200-300 of the daily flights on the route had diverted elsewhere in recent months, according to FlightRadar24 data. However, about 100 aircraft a day from more than 60 different airlines were seen in the region over the past week.
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Germany: "Kiev should have closed their airspace" says lawyer of German MH17 victims' families


Of course a lawyer would say that. Otherwise his client doesn't have a case against the Ukrainian Government. The official report doesn't site blame. So it makes sense from a legal standpoint, but lets not forget, that this lawyer has to prove why Kiev should've closed its airspace...
 
lets not forget, that this lawyer has to prove why Kiev should've closed its airspace..

yep that's what court cases usually are like.
It really would've done just to divert civilian flights a bit north, to cross over a peaceful part of the country where aircraft were not being shot down every 2 or 3 days.

I won't try to estimate their chances of winning. But it is good to have some sort of court case about it, where some evidence under oath, presumably at least partly truthful, may come out. Having anyone charged doesn't look very likely at the moment.
 
yep that's what court cases usually are like.
It really would've done just to divert civilian flights a bit north, to cross over a peaceful part of the country where aircraft were not being shot down every 2 or 3 days.

I won't try to estimate their chances of winning. But it is good to have some sort of court case about it, where some evidence under oath, presumably at least partly truthful, may come out. Having anyone charged doesn't look very likely at the moment.
I'm in agreement and hind sight is 20/20. They felt commercial airlines were safe above 32000 ft though. But looking back who can argue they shouldn't have diverted since we know the outcome. But still there were a number of similar flights over that area unharmed.
 
But still there were a number of similar flights over that area unharmed.

EVERY commercial flight over there until July 17 was unharmed. "Every" is a powerful precedent for thinking the situation would continue. Despite later denials, the military may/would have been aware the separatists had a BUK, but the civil authorities may/would not have known, and set the 32,000 limit as being a good safety margin over the hitherto known much lower level shoot-downs. Still, they will argue in court they should have made it a total no-fly zone for civilians. There was a chance to rethink and revise the conditions when they had to redraw the ATC boundaries between Crimea and Ukraine proper.
 
EVERY commercial flight over there until July 17 was unharmed. "Every" is a powerful precedent for thinking the situation would continue.

I don't think so. Others may have just been lucky.

Despite later denials, the military may/would have been aware the separatists had a BUK, but the civil authorities may/would not have known,

military is part of the government, they are not some NGO

the information that separatists had powerful SAMs was all over Internet those days and it is quite easy to check/corroborate
 
many from russian and eastern european forums, just too lazy to search, rebels themselves have bragged around that they have captured BUK while Ukraine denied it.. there was a post on pprune before the crash where ukrainian poster wondered why the airspace is not closed because there is a big chance that rebels could hit civilian plane (or something like that but you get the point)
 
This thead is very interesting. I posted some of this stuff (flight path) among the first on liveleak. I have no real reason why. I know that early on there were talks about a Spaniard hired to do air-controller work who tweeted alot abot the supposed Ukranian conspiracy.

He, his account and everything about him disappeared quite fast.

Jason posts a very interesting list of why the civilian authority should have been concerned.

The problem though was that it was not only flying close to a conflict reason but as you probably have mentioned somewhere drifted even closer, far closer than other civilian aircraft. The recordings of the flight control have to my knowledge not been released.

I think I've read that the Dutch families plan a suite soon.



Concerning the Satelite image according to TinyEye crawler the first images appear on the 14th. https://www.tineye.com/search/c479f...957639c5f7f/?page=3&sort=crawl_date&order=asc

Before that none. No images seem to come from official directories, only broadcasters.


DailyMail debunks them pretty well: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-state-broadcaster-MH17-shot-shoddy-fake.html
 
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