Was there ever a Captain who would refuse a flight plan through or near a notam'd "avoid" area ? I knew one who was then pressurised to do so by his CP. Operating Captain again refused which made the mission impossible leading to a three sector day, more fuel more expense etc. Captain was replaced by a more willing adventurer. The original Capt was red-flagged and later left, enjoying a much healthier climate of professional support for a couple of decades.

- grossly unjustified criticism of Malaysian. If there is any 'incompetence' it was in the failure of the intelligence world to adequately anticipate a 'rogue' shoot down and follow who had access to what and to communicate this to the aviation authorities. Elsewhere it is stated that the 'top' of the prohibited civil flight area was FL320 and this was based on the 'airspace closure' up to FL240 (ie a 33% 'safety barrier' - obviously now seen to be quite inadequate). If you look at FR24 there were several other major international carriers in the same predicament at the time and just - lucky.

You should edit your post title.

'Unverified Nationalities'
 

Some interesting responses to my post re above.

As a healthily cynical old git, I suppose it should have occurred to me that there may be 'reasons' for not disclosing the nationalities of all those on board at this time.

A sobering "Oversimplification of a "continuous-rod"
warhead expansion in progress".

http://i.imgur.com/vccFYiz.jpg

More Info:

TWA Flight 800 Shootdown

Jetsam the area is approximately 50 miles in diameter, in any emergency situation they would be clear of the area in a matter of minutes.

Last time I checked civilian jets don't go 'vertical' on descent!

There's a NY Times link somewhere showing tracks over last week or so. Also the airlines yesterday PM who all suddenly said they'd avoid the area...

If you go to Flight Aware, you can type a Flight # in and get tracks back ~2 weeks. BKK routes to LHR area seem a good starter. You can see BA "looping" around the area, but SQ right through.

Not sure who "your" airline is, but the CAA put out a "UK Operators" NOTAM about avoiding certain FIRs.. so it would take a bit of research to decide which operators were avoiding the area due to their regulators, and which due to their own caution?

p2re referenced a youtube video yesterday at 23:26,which was from a conference 10 days ago where seperatists were saying they were expecting specialists to fix the Buk system they had.
Some kind work by some Russian speaking friends have delved up this:
http://euromaidanonline.com/priznani...hinke-buka-iz/

Hit translate and it appears to confirm this.

Next is a news item from a Russian news agency (similar was on several), dated 29 June, stating that the rebels have at least one Buk system
http://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=1741703
Read it before they take this down too.

Looks like the Rebels had Russian help getting the SAM launcher up and running...

See also https://news.vice.com/video/russian-...te-dispatch-58

Interesting: yesterday afternoon saw the end of the "Donetsk Republic"... at least in the Russian media. Now it's Eastern Ukraine again... (tweet by the Estonian President earlier this morning)

Not familiar with the Buk / SA-17 but how likely is it (if at all) that they actually tried to engage another target, missed and acquired MH17 ?

I really can't get around that anyone would deliberately take out an airliner cruising at FL30 / M0.85.

AN 26/ B777
 

According to one of the "Experts" on Sky News the AN 26 and B777 are very similar:ugh:

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/i...5FclKWzMnMhV4Ahttp://www.pprune.org/data:image/jpe...ACAAAAVEAAV//Z
http://www.pprune.org/data:image/jpe...ACAAAAVEAAV//Z
http://www.pprune.org/data:image/jpe...ACAAAAVEAAV//Zhttps://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...OkwtTe-rVJzMuw

Let's see now. Two wings, fuselage, horizontal tailplane, vertical tailfin, two engines.

Pretty much identical.

Sometimes I despair of these so-called experts they drag from under their stones when this type of thing happens.

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/i...RS0JVwt-Mqvrkc

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/i...6Ske0IqVd1Odog
http://www.pprune.org/data:image/jpe...shMrgq5CEE0f/Z

Sorry, even ignoring size, I don't buy that, although perhaps at 33,000 feet and with naked eye or poor quality optics ......

(Thanks to a fellow Ppruner for pointing out that these photos are too big to validate my comparison.)

Need to be mindful that these missiles will be a locally restricted and expensive asset and will not be blazed away for fun. An act of gung-ho criminal irresponsibility but not a deliberate targeting of a non-combatant. Hopefully their masters will take their toy away, sadly too late.

I recall seeing some signature evidence of SAM detonation on A/C Parts from a previous conflict, which made it pretty easy to determine the system in use. Although I'm not familiar with the alleged system in this case, as F3WMB pointed out, you wont really need a black box for this one, if indeed a SAM was used.
Also, responding to the potential for cockpit evidence, IIRC the KAL shootdown was by an air launched missile, which required multiple launches to bring down the A/C due to the size of the target. Ground based systems don't normally have the same warhead/size constraints of their air launched compatriots.

Howard Hughes, best worst case is a penetration on the normal and immediate turn back - 4 minutes. Worst case is 50 mile penetration and exit - 7 minutes. You have no more than one minute before losing your height buffer.

Overflight no doubt legal but imprudent.

Nitpicker: Perhaps if you were a semi-amateur rebel who had just stolen a BUK system?

I lurk a great deal and don't often post, but in this case it seems that there has been a serious failure by the intelligence agencies. It seems there has been evidence on social media for several days that the separatists had got hold of BUK missile units. Yes, social media has failings (though it is regarded as important enough to slurp by alphabet agencies), but this needed investigating and the information passing to relevant bodies, such as decision-makers in civilian air transport agencies.

This could have been avoided, but, hey, the real risk is uncharged mobile phones ...

Capetonian, I am with Fox3. Most air defence targets are either radar blips or a small dot declared as a legitimate target. Visual ID is impossible for a medium r a range SAM.

Sorry for two posts close together - re: misidentification. I showed my wife, with no real interest in aviation, the pictures posted above. She said that, to her, they are "just planes". Only after some scrutiny could she see what appear to me to be obvious gross differences (different engines, wing shape and location, etc). Even if there was visual, which is unlikely due to the height, it is therefore possible that the same could have occurred at the time of this incident, bizarre as it may seem.

I agree with most that a big error of judgement has been made somewhere. Where as other war zones such as AFG or IRQ have had little in the form of High Alt air defenses, this is not the case with UKR. Arguably, in previous situations this type of risk was next to nothing. However, this situation is entirely different.

The second that the first AN-24 was shot down, alarm bells should have been ringing.

However, as is the case of most things in life, it seems that Corps of the world think "One fits all" - Because there were no such incidents over recent conflict zones, it was fine to continue flying.

The issue with this industry is - why does it always take loss of life for changes to come into affect? Pre-emptive seems to be missing from the Aviation dictionary - it's true meaning at least.

Pre-emptive action - Too much cost to ones pocket.

I think it's a tragedy of two halves too. on top of the massive loss of life, their will be a final victim in all of this - MAS will not survive. this.

Whatever the truth of the nationality, politics etc. of the missile team that was responsible for shooting down this civilian plane, I believe it was an unintended shootdown, a mistake.

It's become all political and it's all down to assigning blame, scoring political points and even looking for some economic advantage, whatever that might be.

This :mad: happens in war, it's happened before and it'll happen again.

Outrage is gonna sell a lot of newpapers and keep folks writing thinkpieces for weeks.

Colour me pessimistic.