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Malaysian Passenger Plane Reportedly Shot Down Over Ukraine
An anonymous reader writes The Russian newswire service Interfax is reporting that a Malaysian passenger plane carrying 295 people was shot down with a Buk ground-to-air missile over Ukraine near the Russian border. The Associated Press cites an adviser to Ukraine's Interior Minister as the source. First reports are that it was mistaken for a Ukrainian AN-26.
Malaysia airlines confirms they lost contact with the plane (last known position), but there's no confirmation it was shot down (yet). The Ukrainian government accused Russia of shooting down a fighter jet in Ukrainian airspace last night. Reports indicate there are no survivors.
Yeah, an issue on board caused by a freaking antiaircraft missile, right?
Actually as I heard it Russia actually shot down a Su-25 the other day as well, so this may have been a result of an overzealous commander telling his subordinates to shoot down "everything that flies."
Pro-russian separatist claimed it, wonder if they are still cheering:
http://vk.com/strelkov_info?w=wall-57424472_7256
Too much of a coincidence for a plane to crash in a war zone where a fighter was shot down just the other day and a transport aircraft An-26 was shot down by a missile at 25,000ft couple of days ago. And by the way, why would a commercial airliner fly through such an airspace anyway?
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
I don't think MANPADS can hit a plane at that altitude. Early reports said this plane was at nearly 30-50k altitude on it's way to Moscow and most MANPAD systems have fairly limited altitude ranges in the 2 mile range. This is the reason Ukraine accused Russia of shooting that other plane transport plane down, it was at an altitude that very very few MANPAD systems are capable of reaching.
Either Russia has given the insurgents some very high tech MANPADS or Russia shot the plane down using an air defense system like the S300. You need pretty advanced (and relatively large) missiles to reach the altitude that commercial airlines fly at.
Well then, to add to the speculation... On Reuters via Twitter, reporter Anne Applebaum tweeted this: Donetsk commander Strelkov, longtime Russian agent, claimed credit today for shooting plane he thought was Ukrainian http://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bsw... Though I can not read Russian (could someone please translate?), I don't get the sense that it says anything too positive though.
Firstly, I'd like to note that I'm not placing blame with any particular party or saying that this was definitely an incident where the plane was shot down. With that said, the plane was in the older Malysia Airlines livery, which has the bottom of the fuselage and engine nacelles painted grey. Perhaps this could contribute to it being mistaken for a military transport by inexperienced or trigger-happy forces, as it would be a similar color to that used on those transports. I hope the truth of this incident can be found without politics getting in the way on every side. The crew and passengers deserve it.
At least for that flight number, it apparently wasn't on a normal flight path. It was around 100 miles further north than that flight flew on previous days.
Check the FlightAware tracking data.
Don't know if that is significant or not but it's easy to verify for yourself. All the other flights on the page of MAL17 flights go over the Sea of Azov or even south of it. This one was well off to the north of it.
Again, don't know why or if that even matters, but at least compared to the other MAL17 flights it did appear to be off course in that region. Not that that is a reason to shoot it down.