Hacker News Reader

Comment by fortran77 | Hacker News Reader

A flight I took last week, TLV->SFO went within 20 miles of Ukraine -- it usually flew right over it. Today I'm on the flight back, and I've heard that they will be rerouting even further, and add about 25 minutes to the flight plan.

(Here's the old route: https://onemileatatime.com/el-al-sfo-tel-aviv-flight/)

View on HN

Too close for comfort, you really don't want to be on the next MH-17, and I really would not put it past Russia to pull stunts like that again. The safe range from any airspace that has Russian controlled hardware in it is roughly the range of their AA missiles.

My FIL is coming here soon and Qatar airlines DOH->IAH leg flies right over Ukraine normally https://flightaware.com/live/flight/id/QTR713-1647752880-sch... . The recent flights show they have adjusted to fly just west, but that's too close for comfort for me.

Still too close. About a week ago a stray huge supersonic drone flew out of Ukraine over Romania and crashed in Slovakia if I'm not mistaken.

Zagreb, Croatia: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60709952.amp

Your "huge supersonic drone" is in reality a subsonic one, that's smaller than an F16 and flies no higher than 19,700ft while a typical airliner cruises at 35,000 to 41,000ft

It is huge by drones standards. It shows that it is easy to miss a missile or a plane in the air there. Russia attacked targets 20 km from Poland border. It is just a bit more than a minute of flying of a transonic plane and even less for a high-speed missile. 60-80 km is inside a normal combat range for S-300 air-defense system. The point is that 45 miles from the border you can still easily happen to step into a combat zone and get into a path of a plane running and maneuvering away from a missile or a missile chasing or even lost/reacquired target. The next link illustrates dangers of flying even 300 kilometers away from firing air-defense systems even during the peace time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberia_Airlines_Flight_1812

Reply on news.ycombinator.com