Quote:
Some national regulators did issue a ban on flights e.g. FAA banned all US flights over Ukraine. Some airlines decided to avoid without waiting for regulator e.g. BA.
True, but the Dutch and Malaysian regulators didn't see this as their task. And there is no system in place in the Netherlands that governmental intelligence information would flow to the airlines or regulators. Airlines could do the risk analysis themselves, but in current cost-cutting environment there is probably not that much capacity available.
Lets wait for the DSB report concerning this.
@sotilaspassi
I agree that the human shield theory is nonsense, because:
1. you still needed to go down for ground attack, so point defence missiles would still do their job.
2. the main ground attack aircraft (SU-25) would not benefit from this because its ceiling is much too low for this.
But the indicents on july 14th and 16th Kiev always stated these were not shot down by manpads, but Pantsir or Air to Air missile. That should have been a warning for everybody flying in that area, even if Kiev didn't close the airspace.
The rebels could also have given warning that civilian air traffic wasn't safe above their territory. They actually claimed that they only used manpads. Probably to lure some Ukraine transport in unsuspecting danger.
And don't forget this: the BUK missile was driven on a truck, and on that truck you can't fire missiles. It was deliberately rolled off that truck, and driven to a field for a specific mission.
After shooting down MH-17 the mission was either forfilled or abandonned and the BUK went back on the truck for voyage home.
That mission was unlikely to protect some armour. If that was the case, it would probably be deployed in the field and driving around without a truck.
The mission was most likely to shoot down the transport plane that dropped supplies for the Ukraine soldiers near the Russian border south of the launch site. This way they could deny supplies to the soldiers there and as a bonus the plane would be shot down over rebel territory before dropping supplies, yielding some goodies for the rebel force.
How they could mix up MH17 with an Ukraine transport is still unclear, and
was already discussed in this thread. Even more so if these were Russian regular soldiers.