By Jim McAuslan, BALPA General Secretary
The only people to blame for the cold-blooded murder of the passengers, pilots and rest of the crew of flight MH17 as it flew over Ukraine are those responsible for firing the missile that brought it down.
British pilots know that under the current piecemeal system for flying over conflict areas it could easily have been them in control of the flight targeted in this incident or future incidents, if this system is not changed.
While we mourn for the colleagues and passengers lost we demand that lessons are learned and changes made to protect passengers and pilots from ever becoming targets again.
This approach is how British pilots, represented by
The British Airline Pilots' Association (BALPA), have helped make flying so safe - but our mission remains to make every single flight safe.
The current process behind the choice of airspace routing is based on a risk assessment; both by a country's national aviation security services in the advice that they give to their airlines, and by the airline in how they assess this advice.
This risk assessment approach can give an illusion of safety but it is in fact vulnerable to all sorts of influences including commercial pressure.
It is not surprising to us that there are differences in the way that this risk is assessed by different airlines.
The current approach has been proven, in the worst possible way, to be utterly flawed.
Passengers and pilots want an open and uniform level of safety, not one that is decided in secret and in different ways by airlines and countries.
Global leadership from the
International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) is urgently needed to respond to last week's tragic incident in the Ukraine and in all operations in or over areas of hostility.
ICAO's purpose should be to lead where national authorities cannot and it should have the tools to do that.
The problem of the absence of a clear international co-ordination to avoid operations above eastern Ukraine has now become tragically obvious and to avoid a repeat ICAO should be better resourced and enabled to declare airspace unsafe.
ICAO also needs to reflect on its own rules of membership.
Participating states enjoy privileges such as free movement, but with that comes responsibility.
If a state does not live up to that responsibility, such as sharing of information and allowing full and free access to accident investigation, then membership and privileges should be reconsidered.
This tragic incident could have been avoided and we must make sure that no more families, friends and colleagues lose their loved ones in this horrific way.
Pilots will continue to do everything we can to make every flight safe.
Aren't we fed up of 'lets throw a flight at this airspace and see if it comes out the other end' attitude to airline safety?
8/8...no airliners move, care to join me?
Bang