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Comment by gleenn | Hacker News Reader

I'm pretty happy someone actually wrote something about this, I was surprised I didn't hear any news outlets talking about the connection beyond just mentioning the other accident.

I'm also happy to see some at least slightly non-trivial statistics in the mainstream.

One glaring point though: the liklihood of another crash might not be high given whatever statistics, but those don't reflect the fact that someone shot a missile at one of those planes. I might risk a flight in Africa or Taiwan or where-ever, but you won't see me flying anywhere near Russia/Ukraine anytime soon even though people obviously thought this was a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

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"but you won't see me flying anywhere near Russia/Ukraine anytime soon"

Actually most flights from Europe to East Asia fly over Russia now while carefully avoiding Ukrainian airspace.

So if you really need there and want to avoid Russian airspace, you'll have to fly via Africa or Americas or possibly transsiberian rail.

By glancing at flightradar24: Everybody is scared to fly over Ukraine, except for Russian (Transaero) and some Turkish planes bound to Russia who fly over central Ukraine just fine.

Airlines are now paying extra-close attention to this, so I really wouldn’t worry at all when flying through this region. (No one is flying over Ukraine or conflict regions inside Ukraine anymore, anyway, but there is really no reason at all to worry about Russia.) It’s rare that civilian airplanes are shot down with weapons, anyway. I don’t think there is any reason to worry. This won’t happen to you.

(Oh, now, don’t get me wrong, were I to fly through this region I would be more scared than I would otherwise be. However, that would be irrational on my part and in many ways an involuntary reaction and no reason to change my plans.)

For reference: http://www.flightradar24.com/49.08,30.48/6

Quite interesting. When you zoom out slightly further you can see a very visible avoidance of the entire country: http://puu.sh/ar1f4/b7231c1b24.png

There's now multiple Western airlines flying over Ukraine. Most planes simply avoid the Eastern parts of Ukraine.

One thing that really surprised me is that how laid back the attitude was of commercial airliners about the Ukraine war zone. It was already in the news that they are shooting down the war planes. So basically they were betting on some Russian missile system that would identify war plane from commercial planes. I would cancel all flights from a region thats engaged in any form of airborne projectiles.

> So basically they were betting on some Russian missile system that would identify war plane from commercial planes.

That's not what they were betting on at all.

They were assuming (incorrectly, as we now know) that the rebels would have smaller missiles, for example shoulder fired missiles like Stingers. Those missiles are able to shoot down planes flying at lower altitude, but they are unable to reach an aircraft at cruising altitude.

I believe the eastern Ukraine already had a closure for flights under 32,000 feet before MH 017. The military planes that were shoot down in the days before were all flying at much lower altitudes.

Surface to Air missiles that can engage planes at cruising altitude are usually only owned by state actors. They also require specially trained personal to operate them. Obviously both missiles and personal were available to whoever shot down MH 017.

Assumptions that can kill hundreds of people. Its illegal to point a laser pointer at an airplane worrying that it would blind pilots even though most planes are on autopilot. At the same time they don't consider to assume that Russian backed rebels would have missiles capable of shooting down planes.

I hope they stay away from Israel/Gaza airspace as well and not wait for another incident. Maybe airlines should publish their flight paths to the public so that we can make our own decision!

> Its illegal to point a laser pointer at an airplane worrying that it would blind pilots even though most planes are on autopilot.

When they're at an altitude that they can be affected by a laser pointer, chances are they're not. The number of aircraft that can do a full Cat III approach with autoland is very small.

Don't most airlines fly great circle routes about 99% of the time?

Ummm wow...that logic.

The problem is that we still don't know for sure exactly what brought down the plane. Reading various news articles, it seems that whoever decides closure of the airspace for commercial flight was betting that the longer range anti-aircraft systems would not be used in the area. Historic data seemed to support this with planes being downed either via shoulder-fired missiles or some sort of gunfire, neither of which has the range to go to the cruising altitude of a passenger liner.

This bet turned out to be bad, very bad.

I don't know of the economics involved, but I'm guessing that, aside from political reasons, the different flight paths avoiding this would have cost the airlines enough to where they didn't want to do it. Which is pretty disturbing...

The again, you don't need war to have air defenses shot down a civilian passenger jet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberia_Airlines_Flight_1812

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