Who shot down MH17

[barbos]

Someone is trying to deflect dutch government culpability.

 

[bilby]

I merely repeated what dutch press said, that's all.
Fact is, airspace should have been closed. And both Ukraine and Netherlands had information to make such determination at the time.
The real issue here is the fact that Netherlands and Ukraine was knowingly sending civilian planes through a war zone where military planes were regularly shot down.

Fact is, the ICAO, not national authorities, have responsibility for deciding what airspace to close, and they closed the airspace below FL240 (24,000 feet) in the Dnipropetrovsk FIR Some time before MH017 was shot down, which was in accordance with previous procedure for heavily trafficked routes over conflict zones, where advanced Anti-Aircraft systems were not known or expected to be deployed. This allows a 33% margin of error above the likely ceiling of 15,000 feet for MANPADS; With 20-20 hindsight this procedure may appear insufficiently cautious, but at the time it had been used for a huge number of conflict zones worldwide at various times, and no aircraft had been lost as a result.

Given the closure of the Sevastopol FIR (for political reasons - both Russia and Ukraine claimed control of that FIR, and the ICAO rule is that the airspace must be closed unless there is a single control authority, agreed to by all parties, for a given FIR), and the ongoing issues in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, there was already congestion on routes between Europe and SE Asia that did not cross those airspaces, so the ICAO would not have been inclined to close Dnipropetrovsk FIR without what they saw at the time as a good reason.

Regardless of the wisdom or otherwise of that decision (which given the facts then known, was not unusual nor obviously unreasonable), the airlines typically took their lead from the ICAO rules in force at any given time. It is inappropriate to blame national governments for not acting unilaterally without an ICAO ruling.

 

[barbos]

I merely repeated what dutch press said, that's all.
Fact is, airspace should have been closed. And both Ukraine and Netherlands had information to make such determination at the time.
The real issue here is the fact that Netherlands and Ukraine was knowingly sending civilian planes through a war zone where military planes were regularly shot down.

Fact is, the ICAO, not national authorities, have responsibility for deciding what airspace to close, and they closed the airspace below FL240 (24,000 feet) in the Dnipropetrovsk FIR Some time before MH017 was shot down, which was in accordance with previous procedure for heavily trafficked routes over conflict zones, where advanced Anti-Aircraft systems were not known or expected to be deployed. This allows a 33% margin of error above the likely ceiling of 15,000 feet for MANPADS; With 20-20 hindsight this procedure may appear insufficiently cautious, but at the time it had been used for a huge number of conflict zones worldwide at various times, and no aircraft had been lost as a result.

Given the closure of the Sevastopol FIR (for political reasons - both Russia and Ukraine claimed control of that FIR, and the ICAO rule is that the airspace must be closed unless there is a single control authority, agreed to by all parties, for a given FIR), and the ongoing issues in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, there was already congestion on routes between Europe and SE Asia that did not cross those airspaces, so the ICAO would not have been inclined to close Dnipropetrovsk FIR without what they saw at the time as a good reason.

Regardless of the wisdom or otherwise of that decision (which given the facts then known, was not unusual nor obviously unreasonable), the airlines typically took their lead from the ICAO rules in force at any given time. It is inappropriate to blame national governments for not acting unilaterally without an ICAO ruling.

I think I remember reports that a lot of airlines stopped flying there when ukrainian planes started falling down. ICAO does not have their own sources, it uses what is provided to them, it's up to respective government to inform them of the situation. So it's really ukrainians who failed to do that properly. What I see here few governments who are trying to avoid responsibility for obvious fuckup on their part, and it's usual.