Mas 777 Down

[Jumpy]

Interfax reporting that a MAS 777 has crashed near the Russian/Ukrainian border.

[Jumpy]

Confirmed lost contact by Malaysian on Twitter.

[dagger]

In an area of military action!

Ukranians say it was shot down

[CanadaEH]

Reports it was shot down.

[CanadaEH]

Confirmed by Ukrainian PM - shot down .

[CanadaEH]

Suggestion that pro Russian separatists thought they shot down a Ukrainian transport aircraft. They didn't.

http://itar-tass.com/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/1325017

[CanadaEH]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/malaysia-airlines-plane-crash-boeing-jet-carrying-295-people-crashes-in-ukraine-9612882.html

Includes video of aftermath apparently

[J.O.]

If these reports are true, the pro-Russian separatists just blew any chance they had of gaining legitimacy.

[J.O.]

I must admit I find it doubtful that the separatists would have a missile capable of shooting down an airliner at altitude.

[CanadaEH]

There was mention on the radio that the missile came from Russia or that there was a Russian fighter jet involved. All speculation at this point. What ever the case this is not good for anyone.

[cp fa]

At least the authorities won't have too look too hard to find the perpetrators:

https://mobile.twitter.com/PeterShuklinov/status/489793849641140224/photo/1

[cp fa]

Also disturbing, the number of twitter pics of debris from the aircraft, apparently showing people helping themselves to pieces of what should be left untouched as crime scene evidence.

[blues deville]

Also disturbing, the number of twitter pics of debris from the aircraft, apparently showing people helping themselves to pieces of what should be left untouched as crime scene evidence.

Removal of crime scene evidence in this situation is probably not an issue.

Help yourself.

[Seeker]

While removing aircraft parts from the scene likely won't affect the investigation findings I would say that simply out of respect for the victims the area should be protected. Of course any personal belongings should eventually go to NOK but that's unlikely to happen in a war zone.

[acsidestick]

BD, the missile contains hundreds of unique, serial numbered parts. Those numbers will determine who shot what from where. All those numbers were recorded by the manufacture and therefore can say who owned it. Every time a missile is loaded, it is paired to a launcher. There are logs, both physical and electronic which are recorded so the launcher may control a particular flight (self destruct, go active etc). At a million dollars per shot, they aren't shot without various levels of permissions, which means someone is lying, and in cases like this, the liars are usually easily caught. The serial numbers are now mixed in the the aircraft wreckage. It will be essential in the war crimes trial (which there will be) that this evidence is preserved and not taken as souvenirs.

[J.O.]

It would be in the best interests of the shooters to have the scene ravaged for souvenirs as much as possible.

[blues deville]

BD, the missile contains hundreds of unique, serial numbered parts. Those numbers will determine who shot what from where. All those numbers were recorded by the manufacture and therefore can say who owned it. Every time a missile is loaded, it is paired to a launcher. There are logs, both physical and electronic which are recorded so the launcher may control a particular flight (self destruct, go active etc). At a million dollars per shot, they aren't shot without various levels of permissions, which means someone is lying, and in cases like this, the liars are usually easily caught. The serial numbers are now mixed in the the aircraft wreckage. It will be essential in the war crimes trial (which there will be) that this evidence is preserved and not taken as souvenirs.

As per JO's post, I was just kidding. My usual sarcasm was lost with the short comment. What I meant was removal of evidence won't be an issue here because of the parties involved. Anyone accepting responsibility will be hard to find as well.

[Bunk Dweller]

I must admit I find it doubtful that the separatists would have a missile capable of shooting down an airliner at altitude.

The separatists claimed a while ago to have captured a Ukranian military anti-aircraft station with BUK missile systems.

[Thebean]

When asked for comment, Air Canada said it has been avoiding the area even before the crash. Angela Mah, a spokeswoman for Air Canada, said the airline had been "proactively" avoiding that airspace for some time.

What route does AC fly that could possibly overfly this area?

[inchman]

When asked for comment, Air Canada said it has been avoiding the area even before the crash. Angela Mah, a spokeswoman for Air Canada, said the airline had been "proactively" avoiding that airspace for some time.

What route does AC fly that could possibly overfly this area?

AC doesn't have a route that overflies that area.

We often go up the west side of the Black Sea out of TLV and we operate to IST which also often goes north out of there so the area would be within the purview of dispatch and, it would seem, had been identified as a no-fly zone for us even though it may not be right on a route. I think it actually speaks to the thoroughness of security processes to monitor not just the specific areas of operation but also adjacent ones.

[Zan Vetter]

I think the statement is more effective when it sounds proactive, rather than just saying ,"we don't fly there." Sounds more reassuring.

[J.O.]

It's been revealed that MH17 was some 300 km north of their original flight planned route due to deviations around thunderstorms. The airspace was NOTAMed closed from FL320 and below but MH17 was at FL330. Such a senseless tragedy.

[inchman]

It's been revealed that MH17 was some 300 km north of their original flight planned route due to deviations around thunderstorms. The airspace was NOTAMed closed from FL320 and below but MH17 was at FL330. Such a senseless tragedy.

I think the statement is more effective when it sounds proactive, rather than just saying ,"we don't fly there." Sounds more reassuring.

All the more reason for dispatch to "proactively" have the airspace marked as no-fly rather than "we don't fly there so we'll ignore it".

Also one of the reasons why we advise dispatch of any major deviations from flight planned route and why they get an alarm when we deviate by more than 50 miles from flight plan.

[Bunk Dweller]

It's been revealed that MH17 was some 300 km north of their original flight planned route due to deviations around thunderstorms. The airspace was NOTAMed closed from FL320 and below but MH17 was at FL330. Such a senseless tragedy.

It was merely said that they were on a different route (farther north) than the same flight had taken the previous few days and it was assumed it was because of thunderstorms. I don't know very many airlines that flight plan around a few thunderstorms. It seems most likely that this was the most efficient track on this day. There were a couple dozen other flights nearby at the same time as this one was shot down and I believe this is a very common route for flights from Europe heading to SE Asia.

Major airlines fly over all the world's trouble spots on a continuous basis: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Ukraine…etc..etc. I think it has just always been assumed that conflicts on the ground wouldn't and couldn't effect aircraft flying overhead at high altitudes.

When asked for comment, Air Canada said it has been avoiding the area even before the crash. Angela Mah, a spokeswoman for Air Canada, said the airline had been "proactively" avoiding that airspace for some time.

What route does AC fly that could possibly overfly this area?

Probably none, but why not take the opportunity to get some good PR by saying they were "proactively" avoiding it.

[Don Hudson]

Web evidence points to pro-Russia rebels in downing of MH17 (+video)

There are strong, though not conclusive, indications that pro-Russian separatist rebels fired the missile that downed Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 today.

By Arthur Bright, Staff writer

July 17, 2014

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2014/0717/Web-evidence-points-to-pro-Russia-rebels-in-downing-of-MH17-video

The records of internet archive site The Wayback Machine (WM) appear to confirm that Girkin made such a claim and erased it soon thereafter.

The Wayback Machine (WM) is run by Internet Archive, a US-based non-profit corporation, and is dedicated to recording and preserving the state of websites as they've evolved over time. It does this by periodically crawling websites as they are changed and saving an exact copy to its archives.

Graphic Europe

Video Pro-Russian rebel commander: 'We did warn you – do not fly in our sky'

Girkin's VKontakte page is one of those sites recorded by The Wayback Machine. The site uploaded a version on July 17 at 15:22:22 GMT that included the following statement (All quotes from the page are translated from the original Russian).

"In the vicinity of Torez, we just downed a plane, an AN-26. It is lying somewhere in the Progress Mine. We have issued warnings not to fly in our airspace. We have video confirming. The bird fell on a waste heap. Residential areas were not hit. Civilians were not injured."

The Antonov 26 is a Soviet-era military cargo plane The post also links to two videos of plane wreckage on the ground that appear identical to the footage since shown on television of the wreckage of Flight MH17.

WM shows another, largely identical archive of Girkin's page from about 27 minutes later at 15:49:39. But at 16:10:58, WM shows a new version of the page, which features a newer post that appears to be copied and pasted from an Interfax article. The new archive contains both the older claim of responsibility and this new statement:

The leadership of the Donetsk People's Republic [DNR] deny any connection to the falling of the Malaysian Boeing 777 near Donetsk. Interfax was informed about it by a member of the Security Council of the [Donetsk] Republic, Sergei Kavtanadze. According to him, self-defense formations do not have at their disposal armaments capable of hitting a plane the the altitude of 10,000 meters. The mobile Zenit rocket complexes that DNR forces possess have a maximum effective range of 3,000 meters.

Girkin's VKontakte page was updated a third time, at 16:56:38. In the third update the claim about the AN-26 has been deleted and a new post appears that claims that flight MH17 could not have been shot down by the rebels:

The Prime Minister of the DNR Alexander Borodai has officially confirmed the fact of the falling of the passenger plane near Toreza. At the crash site and investigative team of the general prosecutor's office of the DNR is working. The DNR is interested in an objective investigation of this incident and is prepared to give foreign investigators access to the crash site.

Alexander Borodai believes this is a provocation by Ukrainian siloviki [hawks]. The DNR doesn't have anti-aircraft weapons capable of hitting a passenger plane flying at the cruising altitude of air routes. The ceiling of our own anti-aircraft weapons is 2.5 km. The cruising altitude of passenger planes is considerably greater. The Ukrainian side, as early as July 14, announced that it was putting its air defenses into combat readiness.

In fact, the Donetsk rebels have claimed to have in their possession a number of mobile "Buk" anti-aircraft systems in the past, though they appear to be trying to scrub such claims from the internet today.

All this creates the impression that Girkin claimed responsibility for the downing of MH17, thinking it was a Ukrainian military transport, and then panicked and tried to hide the evidence after the truth came out.

It is possible that the WM website could have been spoofed somehow to create these records, but it would not be easily done. To do so would either require hacking WM and creating the new records within its system, or spoofing the records by tricking WM into thinking it was accessing Girkin's page when it was actually accessing a third-party site. Both possibilities would be difficult to carry out.