From what I read, all the airlines vectored around Ukraine for this very reason. Except for Malaysia Air which failed to do so.
Their body count approached 600 for that year.
Flying into a war zone is usually unwise. Malaysia Air didn’t read the memo.
Your assertion is not true. What is true is that some, but not all, airlines were avoiding this airspace.
The airspace was not closed to commercial traffic, and I believe that most airlines continued to use it until the shoot-down. I think the record will show that traffic passed through this area immediately before and after MH117.
According to data from the flight-tracking company FlightRadar24, there were 55 planes that flew over eastern Ukraine around where Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 was hit on Thursday, including those from Qatar, Emirates, Etihad, Austrian Airlines, Thai Airways, Jet Airways and Pakistan International Airways.
A Singapore Airlines flight from Copenhagen to Singapore was within 15 miles of Flight 17 at the time of the crash.
Link: http://mashable.com/2014/07/18/ukraine-planes-conflict-zones/#gJculsjfZiqx
The airspace was not closed. The altitude of the flight was assumed safe.
That's interesting, because even on that global flight-tracking website, you could see all the international flights flying over the same area.