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Comment by Freak_NL | Hacker News Reader

Bit of an odd comparison, given that one of those flights (MH17) was shot down by a Russian Buk squad. That was not an issue attributable to the carrier in any way, and after the incident the likelihood of it happening again to Malaysia Airlines specifically was negligible.

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It could be prevented by simply not flying over an active war zone, something airlines do all the times to prevent the exact same thing from happening.

Airlines started being more sensitive to this after the 2014 crash

Or Girkin not ordering the civilian plane full of people to be shot down. It was a civilian plane at 10km altitude with a transponder on. Really doesn't look like a jet on a radar.

And up to that point Russia wasn't known to supply the separatists with an anti air system and the crew to run it.

It would seem the air defense systems used could not reliably determine what you imply they should [1][2]. I’m not sure where you’re coming from, or why it would matter what one country was known or not known to do.

[1]: https://www.technologyreview.com/2014/07/18/12951/how-can-a-...

[2]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/07/18...

> why it would matter what one country was known or not known to do.

It absolutely matters.

Flying over a war zone with known anti aircraft missiles is quite different to flying over a low level conflict that is using small arms only.

There was no war zone at that time.

> Flying over a war zone with known anti aircraft missiles is quite different to flying over a low level conflict that is using small arms only.

What was in the news at the time, and the news are still linked from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Donbas#Escalation_in_Ma...

2 June 2014: "Luhansk airstrike"

14 June 2014: "A Ukrainian Air Force Ilyushin Il-76MD was shot down"

20 June 2014: "The insurgents [...] shot down a Su-25 bomber."

14 July 2014: "Ukrainian Air Force launched air strikes targeting insurgent positions across Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. The Ukrainian government said that 500 insurgents were killed"

17 July 2014: "DPR forces shot down a civilian passenger jet, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17"

Doesn’t look like a F14 either but a US warship, rather than some guys in a field, still managed to pull that off and send 290 people to their graves.

But it did look like an F-14. There really was an F-14, just on the ground at an Iranian airbase. And the Vincennes was under armed attack at the time--Iran let a civilian jetliner overfly their own attack. Plenty of blame for them, also.

> But it did look like an F-14

It absolutely did not. The RCS of an F-14 v/s an Airbus A300 is an order of magnitude different (probably 2 or 3 orders).

> There really was an F-14, just on the ground at an Iranian airbase

There was, but that’s a red herring for the root cause. Each ship’s radar independently and correctly identified and tracked the Airbus separate from the Mode 2 targets, but when communicating the track information between ships, the tracks were mixed up.

Source: The US Navy’s own account: https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/about-us/l...

> There was a combat camera team aboard the Vincennes, and the footage depicts considerable confusion and even ill-discipline amongst the crew (cheering, shouting, football game atmosphere) that contributed to one of the most tragic events in U.S. Navy history

The URL you linked to results in a 503 error (Service unavailable) and the Wayback Machine returns "Error code: 403 Forbidden" with "Looks like there’s a problem with this site", for all timestamps I tried, in 2025 or 2024.

I'm outside the US so that's probably the cause. Is such information available elsewhere?

I’m outside the US too and the link works for me

But this also works: https://archive.md/XsxT8

And also this: https://web.archive.org/web/20251208110440/https://www.histo...

The point is this is a fog of war situation. Mixing up who is who in combat is a very real issue where we have gotten better over time but have never truly solved.

I put the primary blame on Iran because they cleared a civilian plane to overfly combat they initiated. They set the situation up, a mistake happened.

Fog of war isn't like in a video game where it's just whether you can see something--in the real world by far the biggest factor is identifying what you see rather than simply seeing it.

That’s not the point, though.

Don’t fly a commercial passenger jet over an active known war zone. Then you don’t even really have to think about whether the separatists below you know whether your signature looks like a fighter jet or not lol.

Never leave your safety to the vagaries of Russian incompetence or malice, surely.

Russia is active war zone. Russians are flying commercial passenger jets over active war zone and then shooting them. Embraer E190 was the latest victim of Russians. Russia is the problem.

I never said Russia isn’t the problem. But intentionally flying your 777 over an active war zone is asinine regardless, is it not?

Yep, Russians does that intentionally, while Malaysian and other airlines are just following rules and air corridors.

I remember seeing video of the guys behind it seeing the wreckage and saying something like 'shit it was an airliner'. I think they shot thinking it was a military aircraft.

I'm not sure why Girkin would want to shot down an airliner?

And the other one was, as far as I remember, likely deliberate based on the pilot’s flight simulation data.

That one doesn't reflect well on the airline IMO. There should be systems in place to help employees cope with mental health issues so that they don't end up hijacking their own plane.

Also odd considering the other crash (MH370) was almost certainly a pilot suicide. Take my opinion with a grain of salt, but I’m not sure what they could have possibly done to prevent it.

Thankfully the aviation industry and related agencies are not so quick to dismiss human factors as unmitigateable.

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