Well, one it was the shortest route, and that saves a ton of fuel, which to a financially strapped airline means a lot of cash kept, and two, up until today no one there was shooting down airliners, and three, many other airlines are flying over the Ukraine/Russia on a daily bases.
Still, I’ll be that will be stopped REAL soon.
Can you imagine being on a say, Stockholm to Singapore flight right now? “Uhm, ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain speaking... Uh, traffic control has advised us to take a more Southerly route this morning, so we’ll be flying over South Africa... Our landing time will be correspondingly longer...”
The U.S. Embassy in Kiev, Ukraine has released this statement:
Ukrainian authorities report that bodies and debris are spread across a 10 mile distance and that all 295 passengers and crew are believed dead. Ukrainian military analysts believe a Russian-made SA-17 Grizzly surface-to-air missile system destroyed the plane.
“If true, this represents a significant escalation, as the SA-17 is a sophisticated system requiring a whole suite of radar and command vehicles.”
Militants from the Donetsk People’s Republic have secured the site and are refusing access to outsiders.
An aviation expert has told the BBC it is unlikely that anyone survived the crash. Peter Felsted, the editor of Jane’s Defence Weekly, said sophisticated weaponry would have been needed to take down a flight travelling at such an altitude.