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Green Guard
Ukraine responsible for airspace safety: IATA
Finally some meaningful discussion and data in the media.
KLM809 flight-paths are especially revealing. Clearly, they attempted (and twice flown) through what was officially closed airspace of the Crimea restriction zone, which was safe (but officially disallowed), and on other occasions flown the northern Donetsk route, which was officially open, but obviously very unsafe due to confirmed SAM activities. Coincidence, or did they try to steer off the Donetsk route but on some occasions were not allowed to.
Therefore, situation was a complete FUBAR. Local ATC should have closed the airspace in situation such as this and ICAO should always be breathing down their necks when something like this goes on. Instead, it appears everyone was playing politics, as usual. Trying to punish Russia by excluding Crimea space to force the routes over Ukraine did not make any sense as the traffic had to enter Russia space anyway. If someone was determined to play such punishments, restricting all Russia east of Ukraine would have made much more sense.
This is why blaming MH staff for this in any way is insane. How could they do things differently? By having their own intelligence crew for each country they are overflowing? Monitoring press reports about who and when captured SAMs?
Yes, it's disgusting that any cretins would be shooting at things in the sky without knowing what they were shooting at. But, ironically, for them to know what they were shooting at, they would have to have full support of Russian radar and C&C facilities - meaning full Russian involvement and not silly proxy games.
But, from the rebel point of view, (being bombed and shelled daily) it is easy to see why they would think that one would have to be completely NUTS to fly over that area.
(p.s. - From the maps, next time I'm flying I would go for BA or AirFrance. They obviously sensed the FUBAR, even though were not legally required to do so, and routed clear of it. )