And I'd estimate that probably 8 out of 10 or 9 out of 10 airliners would survive a hit from a Soviet SA-7. Not that getting hit with one is a trivial thing (ask the pilots of that DHL plane in Baghdad) but the warheads are awfully tiny. I'm not up on the specs of the SA-7's. They may or may not have an operational envelope like the Stinger or Redeye. The Stinger isn't supposed to be able to be usefull below a few thousand feet, but they seemed to be useful at dropping Soviet choppers during the 1980's.
My guess would be that if missiles are used, the best chance at dropping a passenger jet would be shortly after takeoff, when a plane would need the power of all it's engines to gain altitude or possibly on approach to landing. Picking off plane on approach for a landing seems even more likely as it would throw a wrench into things if all planes were ordered to land ASAP.
The SA-7a had a slant range of 3.6 km and a kill zone between 15 and 1500 meters in altitude, with a speed of about 430 meters per second (Mach 1.4). The SA-7b has a slant range of about 4.2 km, a ceiling of about 2300 meters, and a speed of about 500 meters per second (Mach 1.75). Both the SA-7a and SA-7b are tail-chase missile systems, and its effectiveness depends on its ability to lock onto the heat source of low-flying fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft targets.
similar to the redeye ...more from FAS