Tough choice to avoid area when a fly around wil add approx $18000 to the flight and especially when told you are safe above F320 was it? Would be a good safety culture to fly around after that. Of course $18000 is nothing after what happened.
Question for me is why did they give the seperatists that kind of weapon if you are trying to knock down AN26's, even a Ukranian SU27 would surely fly much lower to strike ground targets? Russia needs to face music for giving that kind of system to those vodka swillers, recipe for disaster.
Russia supplying tons of deadly weaponry to rebels/terrorists/seperatists (whatever), I'm sure there are a couple of Rhodesians sitting around their scooners in a Aussie pub saying "now where have we heard of that before?"