With my last company we had "War area" coverage, it cost extra, not all that much either, but we did have coverage for overflying an active war 'zone/area'.

I seem to remember some exclusions, but what areas I cannot recall now.

Interesting that the two European countries with the most complete military forces were the only ones to really pay attention.

What I don't get is KLM? AF was avoiding Ukraine, but KLM was not... :ooh:

Homogeneity and synergy at its most flakey ? Or simply different insurance underwriting arrangements permitted to persist ? I wonder what those who know the answer within the group and in the City are thinking right now.

BLACK (ORANGE) BOX FOUND
 

Here is video proof

Black box retrieved at Ukraine crash site | Video | Reuters.com

Most likely the "black boxes" are not going to show a thing except normal ops until they suddenly stop, when the tail was blow off by the missile.

Can someone explain why some airlines were flying through the area and others not i.e. based on which criteria, and what's the meaning of closing an airspace up to FL320? If a SAM able to get to, say FL300 wouldn't it be able to get to FL330 or higher? Either the FL320 cap was intended to provide some margin over a SAM operating altitude of say 20000/25000 ft. But not being an expert, how many missile systems reaching 20000 ft wouldn't be able to get much higher? It seems to me either the decision not to close the entire airspace earlier was very irresponsible or the airlines flying through eastern Ukraine hadn't done a proper risk assessment or both. Obviously I would expect the uncertainty over an airspace closing boundaries to be higher in cases of war/conflict like this than, say , of a volcanic ash cloud where there would be measurements, models to extrapolate the concentration of ash. Here, as soon as authorities have reason to believe there is a use of advanced weapons (not short range, not near surface) then shouldn't they factor uncertainty much more hence closing airspace? And knowing this may be not the case with some governments, shouldn't airlines factor it by taking over the risk and hence avoiding completely the area (as apparently some have done?)

AF / KL
 

Perhaps because the KL flights were to Kuala Lumpur and the AF flights were to Bangkok?

Most of the ones you would normally worry about when overflying areas with rebels, terrorists, or the like. The missiles they usually have are launched from the shoulder, and will only reach targets flying at 25,000 feet or lower.

Listen, it is easy to laugh now, post fact and point out that it was obvious that airspace should have been closed. If you are so clever and everybody else so dumb you should have been here the day before this shooting and warn everyone. Knowledge about what weapons were in the area (and some could imply be rolled in through the border within hours) was quite sporadic and incomplete, not to mention it was hard to predict someone would be so dumb to shoot up and not even engage in routine warning to traffic in the area.

CNN was showing footage of what looked like the crashscene of MH17. However the video showed parts of the MH17 crashscene mixed with parts of another crash scene in Ukraine. Most like the IL76 crash scene. The missle is not a SA-11.
See this image https://twitter.com/marcelvandenber/...497472/photo/1

Video of CNN here First-hand account of MH17 crash site: Bodies are scattered ? The Lead with Jake Tapper - CNN.com Blogs

This excludes flights in normal cruise, but presumably not those that have unpredicted issues such as depressurisation?

Frankly over the last couple of days I must admit I've been amazed at how many of my colleagues seem to be gob smacked that a SAM can "get high enough take out an airliner".....best I can politely come up is to refer them to Gary Powers.....


These darn things will either struggle to get above 15k .....or they won't struggle at all .....

In the former case we make sure we're not in the envelope, in the later case we just have to overfly the sites ( I'm sure I'm not the only one who has seen the "Star of David" entanglements around some Middle eastern cities, one in particular ) and realise that we rely on some sense of decency, ROE, and order. I have certainly had reason to hope that someone was not as daft , as olasek put it, to be "so dumb to shoot up and not even engage in routine warning to traffic in the area".

Interesting perspective from a disillusioned Russian journo
Russian media is covering up Putin's complicity in the MH17 tragedy | Masha Alekhina | Comment is free | theguardian.com

AF and KLM were merged at the corporate level back in 2004. I'd put down AF's choice of route down to being the most direct route from CDG while KLM made the equivalent choice from AMS. Saving money on every flight is what drives routing decisions, not the remote chance that flying one route verses another will result in a black swan.

That MH elected the least costly route is an even more obvious economic decision for an airline that was already in terminal condition.

In the light of apparent scant understanding of SAM capability and its implications for overflight of conflict zones, could there be a case for ATPL knowledge to include some very basic stuff about the differences between MANPADS and radar SAMs, and an overview of some unclassified "Jane's"-type performance figures? At least that knowledge would give pilots an insight into why their company's minimum flight level over Afghanistan is X, or why they need to avoid Eastern Ukraine by Y miles. Surely that knowledge would be more useful than a lot of the other stuff in ATPL....

For the earlier poster asking about why FL320 and below were considered higher risk... 24000ft is about the max capability of state-of-the-art MANPADS, of the type that you would expect only major militaries to have (but who knows?). Add a 33% safety margin and you get 32000ft. The performance of these things falls away very rapidly outside their envelope. In all likelihood you'd be perfectly safe at 300. So there is no need to add a further margin onto what was already a generous safety factor - for a MANPADS.

The moment it looked likely that radar SAMs were being thrown around, that whole calculus should have been thrown out. The appropriate question was then "how far do I need to avoid the area by"? There are a couple of radar SAMs that can be overflown safely at 300+, but the SA-11 isn't one of them.

As in most things military, maximum performance figures are highly classified and depend on a multitude of factors. Ranges for MANPADs generally assume the target is high performance aircraft that can maneuver aggressively and deploy countermeasures (chaff, flares, jamming) in response to onboard and remote (e.g. AWACS) tracking, lockon, and/or launch warnings. Indeed, defeating a MANPAD these days is often more about geometry and maneuvers (at 6 to 9Gs) to bleed the missile of its finite supply of kinetic energy, something commercial aircraft are unable to do.

Shots at non-maneuvering targets (historically large bombers) would still face countermeasures, while typical commercial aircraft engaged with favorable attack geometry would be a best case for the missile. Other factors not considered are launches from significant heights (Afghan mountains anyone?) which both reduce the distance to a given flight level and increase the missile's range due to reduced air friction.

Once the missile is radar guided, altitude becomes your enemy, not your salvation. The game becomes a combination of low-level flying using terrain masking and the curvature of the earth to defeat ground-based radar, stealth to reduce detection ranges, and speed to challenge the response time of the missile launch system.

All this is a long way of saying that what you are suggesting might give some future airline, government, and/or ICAO some legal cover the next time this does (it will) happen, but nothing else.

"Listen, it is easy to laugh now, post fact and point out that it was obvious that airspace should have been closed."

now? There is a ukrainian member here on PPRune that wondered why that airspace isn't closed 10-15 days before the crash, and you can be sure there were many professionals (military and civilian) in Ukraine that wondered the same. Why that decision was not brought is anybodys guess.

"These darn things will either struggle to get above 15k .....or they won't struggle at all ....."

BUK will go to around 50K so only Concorde should be safe...oh wait we ditched it because of noise and costs that didn't pose problems half a century ago.

"As in most things military, maximum performance figures are highly classified and depend on a multitude of factors. Ranges for MANPADs generally assume the target is high performance aircraft that can maneuver aggressively and deploy countermeasures (chaff, flares, jamming) in response to onboard and remote (e.g. AWACS) tracking, lockon, and/or launch warnings. Indeed, defeating a MANPAD these days is often more about geometry and maneuvers (at 6 to 9Gs) to bleed the missile of its finite supply of kinetic energy, something commercial aircraft are unable to do."

except israeli El Al...and people were mocking them about that, now I don't say those would 100% work against SA-11(as those countermeasures are designed with MANPADs in mind) but survivability percentage would be significantly higher

The FDR will yield an exact position where power was lost from the tail being severed shortly after detonation. From that position it will be possible to determine the area where the launcher could be located. Shrapnel marks will provide information on missile aspect which may be used to derive the missile vector back to the launch site.

Actually BUK goes to 72K so only SR71 would be safe :}

newer BUK missile does but I think they had the older type which maxes out at around 50

Really whatever the missile was the guilt of who shot down the aircraft was clearly displayed by one sickening fact!

Anyone who was innocent and wanted to show to the world that fact would have secured the crash site and allowed the investigators to remove the bodies with dignity and to then examine every bit of wreckage which itself would have identified the weapon used.

The guilty ones are those that allowed bodies to be removed took away the evidence and stopped the investigators from having access to the crash site.

The DPR and their Russian masters were guilty of this atrocity and proved this with their own actions over the crash site and attempts to clear the evidence.

May be you can take a look:

1. who is vandalizing
2. who is not

also may be take a look at seperatists leader interview regarding the situation on the ground and how difficult is for them to handle it, lets see their point of view before we jump into conclusions

Don't take me wrong, myself don't have any conclusions yet, I just wait for all this info-war dust to settle down.

Not by US politicians but by OSCE who observed the scene. You don't move actual hardware pieces around unless investigators tell you so. And specially if you are "poor", with dilapidated equipment you don't volunteer and move things around, right?

maybe they don't want to be pushed around and micromanaged by masked commandos who tell you where to look and where not to look and look at their watches and tell you your time is up.

Forensic view on victims
 

Forensic dentist, former assistant surgeon to Oz army, Dr Griffiths interviewed on ABCTV today.

Says the reported delay in refrigerating bodies does not affect victim identification because visual identification has proven time and again to be inaccurate. Decomposition of 5 days, in his experience of the Tsunami, does not affect victim ID.

He gave an example of the Bali bombing, where 18 families had positively identified their loved ones by visual reference, but the bodies were fortunately, not released until DNA was processed.

Of these 18 victims, 9 were wrongly identified by the visual method by their families:eek:

Sadly infants take longest to identify as they have no dental records.
He says 3 weeks is typical for such incidents.

He commented that following Lockerbie there is conjecture, but no evidence if anyone can survive a similar breakup at high altitude. Unless there are survivors it is conjecture, he said.

AreOut
 

A while back I posted BUK can climb to at least 72,000' (likely a good deal more)
See Wiki and Jane's for answers to your query. Unless you are drone flight or invisible there are S.A.M's in or near E.Ukraine that will blow you out of the sky.

Any pilot with a curiosity and a computer will find the reality.

ANALYSIS OF PHOTOGRAPHS
 

Has any contributor examined photographs of the debris with a view of spotting damage attributable to a missile strike? I believe I saw fuselage skin exhibiting an outward bend to a panel edge, and a substantial box section that apparently had peculiar failure lines. I have no relevant qualification, but maybe an engineer current on type might be able to say? (I presume accident investigators, past or present, will already have done this, but are wisely keeping their counsel.)

Re Analysis of Photographs
 

It's notoriously difficult to determine if an explosion is internal or external based on a few photographs.

You can easily get impact damage on one part of an aircraft from an explosion on another part. Even disintegrating wheels do this.

A proper investigation - which will happen for sure - will determine the location and type of any disruptive event. For reference, look at the NTSB report on TWA-800 which spent a very long time eliminating a US Navy missile, or terrorist missile, or an internal bomb as the cause for the observed damage.

As with another poster, very few people are asking why this particular plane and not Singapore, Air India or any others flying in the vicinity that day.

It takes the BUK 5 minutes to warm and launch a missile, which clearly shows intention to target this specific craft.

No airliner would have such luck to lose two 777s in 4 months without more to the story (as usual).

They sent out about 45 of our guys at the ATSB to assist alongside NTSB and other investigators. Quite a few very serious jobs involving our guys recently instead of the usual and more common GA incidents and loss of separation investigations/reports.

Hopefully these guys will be alright while investigating.

Media bias and propaganda and responsible journalism
 

Gotta love the comments here about media reports from eastern Ukraine... is it a "media scrum" traipsing around and through the site, or just "media scum"?


Did anyone catch the live Sky News presentation by Colin Brazier yesterday?


Oh why Colin and Sky News production and broadcast team? So wilfully and deliberately, joyously and gleefully, tampering and interfering with evidence and the crime scene by rummaging, sifting, rifling through ( call it what you may ) victims personal belongings on the crash site.


And then for Colin and Sky to apparently apologise and excuse this shameful, appalling, grotesque, disgusting, disgraceful, unprofessional and potentially criminal activity by journalists as due to being caught up the "truly macabre, horrific situation. There is a degree of anarchy and lawlessness." What a horrific and distasteful piece of so-called journalism.


Sadly Colin and Sky News are no better than the assorted motley crew of criminals, hooded thugs, rebels, armed separatists, Russian supporters and protagonists, and other low life that most ppruners here are rightly railing against.


Truly hope that oxygen thieves and appalling and pathetic little men and scumbags like Colin Brazier never make it on to air today and ever again, otherwise I might have to review the Sky subscription.

BBC radio report;
Rebel leader was interviewed, says the bodies in the refrigerated railway cars will be handed over to international investigators, when they arrive.


Scores of volunteers helping in search of bodies.

Fergal Keane's report shows that what appeared to be looting was a typical military response.

BBC News - MH17 air crash: Pro-Russia rebel video of crash aftermath

Media timeline would have us believe the investigators were scared away by a single shot fired by a sole inebriated soldier a few days ago?


I feel for the ill trained and equipped, firemen, local coal miners police and villagers having to deal with the scene.

Average net income in Ukraine is under $200 a month, less in rural areas.
Expecting a western rescue response is unrealistic.

It is a conflict, if not a war zone, it is as chaotic if it had happened in any such area.

I am sure this was an accident (and nothing more than bad luck for MAS). Had Obama got on the phone to Putin: "Vladimir, we gotta get out heads together on this, what do you want to do?", it's just possible we might have seen some cooperation, at least enough to recover the bodies. Threats were never going to work. Putin doesn't have to do anything and Obama won't. I hope. It's a tragedy for the families but it's not the end of the world. Yet.

cynical view
 

Every one of the 600 hundred posts above is guesswork, fodder for Daily Mail readers. Sure, speculation with a bit of technical jargon thrown in to make the posters look clever. As someone above said, probably feeding the tabloids.

The supposed experts on SAMs and black boxes etc who are coming out of the woodwork to show off their superior knowledge all miss the point. So do the spookers with their number 17 theories. They are scratching at the surface. This latest incident is another move in a political chess game over which only a small number of individuals world-wide has any knowledge, let alone control. It's all about money.

Whether Putin The Terrible is a bad boy or not, whether Obama has another agenda, as Ron Paul alleges, it doesn't really matter. It'll be forgotten in a few weeks like the last one has been and the truth, as ever, will be concealed because the general population is more interested in celebrities' boob jobs and next week's booze binge and the media is all run by a few select individuals in collaboration with the governments.

ISIS (or IS, who have clearly been having a rest) will be back next week executing children with Ebola and Malaysian airlines will continue to operate as though nothing happened.

Storm in a tea-cup. Sorry about the passengers but, as someone pointed out, the same number of civilians (maybe more) has been killed so far in this Ukranian conflict and get killed in every other conflict every day without the Daily Mail blinking an eye, just not affluent, air travelling white people. A couple of political doctors died, lawyers and bankers whose lives are apparently worth so much more than doctors killed in Iraq, Syria or anywhere else. And who cares about bankers.

Good work, western media, sold a lot of newspapers I hope. :D

@Mahatma Kote
There is a war zone out there.....it really is not like a normal functioning place with a police force, a compliant population and rule of law....let alone an air accident investigation team.

There will be no 'proper' investigation...any more than there is one is other plane crashes in conflicts.
I guess from launch traces/AWACS/Sat data etc the USA/USSR already know exactly what sub-type of missile it was and from exactly where it was launched.
We know what brought the plane down - the only thing 'we' don't know is who fired it.
I reckon in a few weeks time it will all have been "forgotten" much like MH370 has been.

Anyway
I've long ago issued instructions to those I know that if I get wiped out in a mega-one rather than the usual rubbish about how wonderful I was and how deeply I will be missed to instead issue a statement that I was a complete f'ing moron and didn't give a t8ss about anything.

Some images of MH17 remains were shown on internet. Those were damaged by what looks like shrapnel.
Anyone can identify:
-if these are parts of Boeing 777
-if this damage is likely to be caused by a missle like SA-11?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BtDH0h0CEAA86Pt.jpg:large

Here is another one
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BtDSVRZIQAAR8sZ.jpg:large
and here
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BtDEIn0IIAAIo9k.jpg
and here
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BtDWnTlIQAAxkIa.png:large

Are the 'rebels' this incompetent?

1. The conversation between a rebel commander and one of his troops about the incident is intercepted and available to western media within hours of it happening. The Ukrainian army must know the moves of the rebels before they even make them!

2. The rebels / Russians try to 'spirit away' the BUK launcher with a missile clearly missing. This is done in broad daylight on the back of a low loader with no escort and not even a tarpaulin to try to disguise it.

3. We are told the FDR has gone to Russia. But first we see it being carried across a field (again in broad daylight, with no covering) when the place is full of journos with HD cameras filming them.

@Bobman re: SAMs

Even missiles from 1961 only had a warm up time of 30 seconds.

V-755U 20DSU (Guideline Mod.3) surface to air missile
AP-755 autopilot, steering fins.
Time to spin up gyroscopes before launch: 30 second
Time to keep gyroscopes spinning without overheating: 5 minutes

This gives a 777 at cruise speed of 900km/h time to move less than 1km which is nothing when you've got detection and missile ranges of 45km to 75km and a target that can't detect, let alone manoeuvre or deploy countermeasures to avoid you.

All this info based on the SA-2E SAM system. For more details check out the "SAM Simulator" and read the supplied documentation then give it a go. You'll be achieving 80% kill rates against similar targets (I use the B52 target drone) in no time at all. You'll see exactly how hard it is to identify different targets from radar scope, but how easy it is to detect, track, lock and fire on a target.

@Pace

Sorry, but this is just very silly propaganda. Did anyone (EU, OSBE, NTSB) come there with some equipment to deal with the decomposing bodies and evidence or did they just send several whiners to look and complain?

Yes - some international body should have instantly sent troops there to secure the site together with the equipment to collect the bodies and the evidence. I am quite sure all sides would have agreed to it. It was not done because everyone wants to play politics with it, with decomposing bodies, with grieving families and their rage, western politicians first of all.

What was done on the ground was organizing a massive search party for the bodies to collect them and to put them on a train, in refrigerated cars, in order to send them to the West. Did you want them to be left rotting in the fields in 90+ deg F/30+ deg C scorching heat so that politicians could play politics with it some more????

The search party consists mainly of local miners who are well versed in rescue operations as they often have to deal with retrieving bodies of their friends buried in the mine.

They tried. The OSCE initially sent a team of 80 people with transport. Only four people were allowed access, only on foot and only for one hour.

Who to gain?
 

We are all speculating, but few are asking WHO would have anything to gain by this awful crime. Surely not the rebels - unless they thought it was incoming military. I tend to think Ukraine would be most likely to gain from it. And of course, if Ukraine did know the rebels had this hardware they stand some responsibility for not shutting down airspace.