Originally Posted by thing
I fly SIA Heathrow-Changi a couple of times a year and the route takes you straight over the top of Afghansitan and has done since the Afghan business started. It's always been a bit of a bum clencher for me.
thing, no need to clench at all. Insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq (post-2003) have been armed with nothing more potent than shoulder-launched heat-seeking missiles. Even the most modern of these can't get anywhere near FL300. There is no risk to traffic overflying Afghanistan in the cruise (different story if you're landing though!). No-one, not even the CIA, Soviets or Iranians has been stupid enough to give anything vaguely potent to the mujahideen or the Taliban, because they know they would have absolutely no control over it. The same is true of most other 'insurgency'-type conflict areas; if the only threat is the shoulder-launched missile then overflight is nothing to be unduly worried about.
The Ukraine scenario is another matter entirely - 3 separate parties, all armed with high-performance radar-guided SAMs with capability up to and above FL400. Given that these SAMs have been used on multiple occasions in recent days, there should have been much greater circumspection from airlines about flying through the area.
Another point to consider is that a shoulder-launched missile operator has to see his target before firing. Even an irregular fighter would recognize the difference between a contrailing airliner way up high, and a military jet manoeuvering in the middle airspace, and they are not so stupid as to waste precious missiles on airliners, which in any case would be of negative strategic value to them. In contrast, the radar SAM operator aims his missile at a blip on his screen, and if he's not interrogating Mode 3, there would be no evident difference between an airliner cruising at FL330 and a lower-altitude target such as a ground attack aircraft or a military transport. It's this that makes radar SAM operation such a demanding and specialized discipline, and heck, even the Americans get it wrong from time to time - let alone irregular troops of unknown training.