KUALA LUMPUR, July 20 — Embattled national carrier Malaysia Airlines (MAS) today announced that it will retire flight code MH17, following the late Thursday attack on their Boeing 777-200 over Crimean airspace which left all 298 passengers and crew dead.

The airline said in a brief media statement that the new flight code for the Amsterdam-Kuala Lumpur route will be MH19, effective July 25.

“In light of the recent incident, Malaysia Airlines’ Amsterdam-Kuala Lumpur service, MH17 flight number will be retired out of respect for our crew and passengers of the mentioned flight code.

“Our thoughts and prayers remains with the families of our colleagues and passengers of MH17,” MAS media relations and strategic communications manager Khairunnisak Dzun Nurin said in the statement.

Despite the flight code change, the airline will continue to operate daily flights between Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpur.

All the passengers and crew aboard flight MH17 died after it was reportedly shot out of the sky by a missile on July 17, 33,000 feet over Donetsk where government forces and pro-Russian separatists have battled over the past few months.

Both the Ukraine government and the rebel faction have denied launching the rocket, as international monitors despatched to investigate the carnage were allegedly only allowed brief stints at the crash site by Kremlin-backed rebels.

There have been concerns that the crash site was not secure, with claims of rampant looting and tampering of evidence by the rebels.

This is the second major aviation disaster to strike the financially ailing MAS, nearly five months after flight MH370 en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur mysteriously disappeared off radars in the pre-dawn hours of March 8.

Experts have since determined that the plane has ended up somewhere in the vast region of the south Indian Ocean, but no proof has been discovered of the whereabouts of the plane or its 239 passengers and crew.