

Don’t Blame Malaysia Airlines - danso
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/19/opinion/malaysia-airlines-flight-17-the-ukraine-wars-victim.html

======
MarkMc
A rebuttal to this argument is found on the last paragraph of this [1]
article:

"Malaysian officials said an airline could not be expected to have the
intelligence information and other resources to make independent
determinations to avoid an area where air traffic controllers were still
sending planes. But some carriers had already done just that. China Airlines,
the flagship carrier of Taiwan, said that it had avoided flying over all of
Ukraine since April 4. Korean Airlines and Asiana Airlines also confirmed that
they had not flown planes through Ukrainian airspace since March 3."

It also looks like Air France and British Airways avoided Ukraine entirely [2]

And even if all airlines had made the mistake of flying over Ukraine, it is
absurd to suggest that an airline might not have the "intelligence information
and other resources" to make an independent judgement about safety. A single
person spending half an hour on the internet would determine that (a) the
rebels were shooting down planes using surface-to-air missiles; and (b) there
are some surface-to-air missiles that can reach an altitude of 40,000 feet.
That is all the information you need to conclude that the area isn't safe for
commercial airplanes.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/19/world/europe/downing-of-
pl...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/19/world/europe/downing-of-plane-
exposes-defects-of-flight-precautions-over-ukraine.html)

[2]
[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/17/world/europe/m...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/17/world/europe/maps-
of-the-crash-of-malaysian-airlines-flight-mh17.html?_r=0)

~~~
chmars
Many other airlines continued to fly over the Ukraine, even most respected
airlines like Lufthansa and Singapore Airlines:

[http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/bild-981813-726883.html](http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/bild-981813-726883.html)

------
snitko
As a Russian, I'd like to say I'm deeply sorry for the losses of passengers'
families. Whoever did this is a complete monster. Many russians do not support
any war or aggression against Ukraine and many are convinced, that Russian
government is in some way responsible for this tragedy.

I personally believe we, as people, will never know the truth as to who did it
- was it Ukrainians or the rebels or the Russians. However, this is the direct
result of the existence of states and governments. We are taxed to build
weapons and go to war for some private and corporate interests we have nothing
in common with. Those weapons were built for our money. If each and every
person was asked separately "would you like to give us 10% of your income to
build these deadly weapons and support the rebels in Ukraine or would you like
to keep this money for your family" nobody would give it away voluntarily.
Taxation and states are at the root of this evil and it is at moments like
these that I can see it as clear as ever.

~~~
ufmace
I'm going to take issue with that taxation and states being the root of evil.
They are an inevitable result of the way that we humans are. If anything is
evil, it's human nature itself.

There are always going to be people who want to form organizations, leadership
cabals, and have control over things. Even areas already under the control of
a strong Government still have corporations, criminal gangs, and various types
of civil organizations, all vying for a little bit of that control pie.

Essentially, there will always be some sort of government. It can be a single
one that's powerful enough to be unquestionably dominant over anything it
chooses to touch, or it can be dozens of little ones, all vying for control
over various things in various places. That essentially looks like Somalia or
Syria or Libya - total chaos, with constant risk of offending one warlord or
another or some gang of bandits, and none of them will make the slightest
pretense of listening to you. Avoiding that requires having one government
with enough power to squash anybody like that. The best we can get is to have
one dominant government, set up in such a way that it has some degree of
obligation to listen to the population.

~~~
ekianjo
> The best we can get is to have one dominant government

You think that would resolve everything hey ? Don't you think one dominant
government would actually have no incentive to listen to the population and
could impose its right by might alone ?

~~~
jahewson
Not really. Look at China, they have a hugely powerful government, yet even
they find it easier to engage in popularism than domination. It's much easier
to govern a country which supports you: logically any sustainable government
should be interested in maintaining enough popularity that their position will
not be undermined: but no more than that.

European history is an excellent case study in the fall of dominant rulers who
failed to satisfy their subjects.

~~~
zenocon
Wow, if you're looking at the Chinese government as a model for governance...

Uniting all world governments into a single state scares the hell out of me,
and I think it could very well be the worst idea, but suggesting China as a
pattern is the icing on the cake, quite frankly.

------
ufmace
Personally, I don't see any reason to blame them for either crash. As far as I
can tell, pretty much every airline in the world thought that the corridor
they were flying over eastern Ukraine was perfectly safe. That flight just had
the bad luck to be there at the time some marginally-competent Ukrainian rebel
in charge of a high-end anti-aircraft missile system got a little
enthusiastic. Could have been any other flight just as easily.

We still don't have any idea what happened to that flight 370, either.

I don't think this will help them, though. I sure wouldn't buy any stock in
anything connected to them. Even if nothing about either crash was their fault
in any reasonable way, people remember stuff like that.

~~~
maaku
Most airlines were avoiding the eastern Ukraine corridor...

~~~
Schweigi
Many did cross - even Lufthansa and Singapore Airlines. Spiegel gathered some
flight data from flight radar.com. The article is in German but you can scroll
to the bottom to see the list:
[http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/malaysia-airlines-
mh17...](http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/malaysia-airlines-mh17-karte-
grafiken-route-flugroute-a-981784.html)

~~~
jakub_g
One should note that though Air France from from Paris to Bangkok used to take
the route south from the Ukraine, the KLM from AMS to Kuala Lumpur was going
through the country, both later merging to the same route over Turkmenistan.

Given that Air France-KLM is a one corporation since 2004, it's pretty
surprising. Paris is a bit more south than Amsterdam, but not that much.

[1]
[http://cdn1.spiegel.de/images/image-726710-galleryV9-ocpi.jp...](http://cdn1.spiegel.de/images/image-726710-galleryV9-ocpi.jpg)

------
sidww2
While it's nice to think that airlines can just rely on regulators to tell
them which flight paths might be unsafe, the reality is that there's no
international regulatory agency governing acceptable flight paths. There's a
regulatory agency for every country and while one country might have stringent
safety measures, another might not.

In such an environment it seems naive for an airlines to not include the
safety of the flight path in their calculations. If all civilian flights below
32K feet are forbidden by the Ukrainian authorities, that doesn't
automatically mean that flying just 1000 feet above would be safe. Also while
other airlines are guilty of flying over war zones too, that doesn't mean
Malaysian airlines is not.

~~~
jrockway
> there's no international regulatory agency governing acceptable flight paths

I believe the ICAO is this regulatory agency.

~~~
sidww2
But with no legal power of enforcement I'm guessing? I mean an airlines can
always choose to follow the directives of agencies from other countries that
have more stringent standards.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that there should be definitely increased
public pressure on airlines to include flight safety in their calculations. Or
atleast not fly over active war zones..

~~~
jrockway
The threat model was such that they thought the missiles in that region
couldn't hit targets above 32,000 ft. MH17 was flying at 33,000 ft.

All rules bodies can do is make rules based on the best available information.
Their information was wrong, but it's not like they didn't try.

------
philjohn
Interesting report on the flight path on BBC news yesterday - they showed that
most European airlines flew directly over Ukraine ... British Airways however,
have been skirting the country entirely, either going North or South depending
on available corridors.

That could just be the usual British "better safe than sorry" mentality, but I
suspect they were perhaps given intelligence that suggested unstable rebels
had access to SAMs.

~~~
konstruktor
If a British service has had intelligence on that, they have failed to protect
9 of their compatriots by just sharing it with BA.

~~~
arjie
Considering the story (true or not) about Coventry not being warned about the
German bombers coming for it isn't exactly treated as one of national shame,
it isn't quite clear that losing 9 citizens is a big deal to them under these
circumstances.

------
chmars
Interesting titbit:

One of the videos that is supposed to prove that the airliner was shot down by
pro Russian rebels is one day older than the incident according to the meta
data:

[https://twitter.com/ofehr_en/status/490039740595707904/photo...](https://twitter.com/ofehr_en/status/490039740595707904/photo/1)

The truth probably is that a major propaganda war is under way and we simply
do not know (maybe never will know) who is directly to blame for the incident.

~~~
arjie
Let's nip this in the bud. That's a Youtube bug [1]. The reddit story [2] has
some nice comments.

1:
[https://gist.github.com/klaufir/d1e694c064322a7fbc15](https://gist.github.com/klaufir/d1e694c064322a7fbc15)

2:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2b4kpg/conspira...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2b4kpg/conspiracy_and_an_offbyone_error/)

~~~
chmars
Thanks, good to know! :)

------
richardwigley
The Guardian has a data blog of the airliners flying over the region. Top 5
fliers were Aeroflot (86), Singapore (75), Ukraine (62), Lufthansa (56),
Malaysia (48). Really could have been anyone.
[http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/jul/18/mh17-he...](http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/jul/18/mh17-heathrow-
top-departure-point-planes-near-east-ukraine)

------
danso
FWIW, the NYT's news section has a more detailed examination of the politics
and technicalities here...and the OP (who is writing in the opinion
section)...seems kind of weak:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/19/world/europe/downing-of-
pl...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/19/world/europe/downing-of-plane-
exposes-defects-of-flight-precautions-over-ukraine.html)

I would've posted this link had I seen it earlier...but it is interesting to
see how the OP, a pilot himself, thinks MH17 didn't have much cause to change
its route. I mean, the OP even acknowledges that the Malaysian Air pilots
would've known about the Ukranian cargo plane that was shot down earlier that
day...in the NYT news report linked above, the 32,000-ft-restricted altitude
left planes exposed to rockets that could strike at twice that height.

~~~
_delirium
Thanks, this article answers some of the questions that were left in my mind
from the op-ed, which I was surprised it hadn't discussed. After reading the
op-ed, it was unclear to me if _lots_ of airlines were flying through this
space, or if Malaysia Airlines was unique in doing so. The way it was written
almost made me suspect he was defending Malaysia Airlines for having made an
unusual decision to fly through space that other airlines were more prudently
avoiding. But the article you link here mentions that flight traffic above
32,000 feet was not much down from pre-restriction levels, so Malaysia
Airlines seems to have been doing what was the norm.

------
chimeracoder
My favorite part, right at the end:

> After each crash, disaster or terrorist episode, it is natural to point
> fingers and say, Why didn’t we foresee that specific threat? Thus one
> attempted shoe bombing leads to a decade of shoes-off orders in security
> lines. The truth is that air transportation, like most other modern systems,
> could not operate if it fortified itself against every conceivable peril.

Many people like to use phrases like "one $INCIDENT is one too many". In
reality, all of life is about balancing and mitigating risks. Just because a
single failure happened in one case doesn't mean the entire system is faulty;
given enough time, any system that is not 100% foolproof (that is, all of
them) is going to have a failure. The question is whether it is actually
feasible and/or reasonable to prevent those.

~~~
harimau
Not even one incident. Hence, still having to get rid of water bottles, etc.

~~~
mertd
Only to be repurchased 10ft later for an exorbitant price, because the
contents of those bottles went through the most thorough examinations possible
and are perfectly safe.

------
MisterMashable
Unless the plane crash was due to a software bug, this story, however
important it is, has no place here. I appreciate your interest and concern but
this isn't the right forum.

~~~
MisterMashable
The point is this has nothing to do with software or anything of interest to
Hacker news. Why bother reading HN if it's going to be cluttered with posts
and comments that clearly belong elsewhere (Huffingtonpost.com, Disqus,
Twitter whatever...) then some sour grapes crybaby who seeks attention voted
down your Karma to prove a point. I'll still read HN but some participants are
just trollish. I'll never hire or work with anyone with the usernames above
because in my world civility and good behavior counts, even with the "little
things" like respecting HN guidelines (see below) but it's your life and do
what you want with it. Sooner or later you'll put your foot in your mouth in
the very worst way and panic all day over your mistake.

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