Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was guided off its most recently used course as its pilots hoped to avoid thunderstorms brewing in the south of Ukraine, it has been claimed...
The UK Civil Aviation Authority recently urged UK-based airlines not to fly over a wide area near the Crimea, Black Sea and Sea of Azov, and several airlines, including British Airways, have followed that advice.
Others, however, had been continuing to use the route, which is one of the "aerial motorways" between northern Europe and south Asia. Malaysia Airlines was one of more than a dozen that flew the route on Thursday. Its flight MH17 was only a few miles from an Air India Boeing 787 and a Singapore Airlines 777 when it was shot down. The only restriction placed on the route by the Ukrainian government was that aircraft must remain above 32,000ft...
He said: "Do we stop planes flying over Israel, for example? Looking across the world, stopping flights over conflict zones would add a huge burden to the aviation industry. We need to see what the inquiry into the disaster discovers. I just hope that politics does not get in the way of the inquiry."
Since the crash, all airspace in eastern Ukraine has been closed.
