KUALA LUMPUR, July 20 ― Malaysia Airlines (MAS) should not be blamed for letting Flight MH17 fly over Ukraine’s combat-riddled east, an American writer and expert pilot said.
Amid much finger-pointing over the air disaster that killed all 298 people on board, James Fallows said the airline had properly kept to international legal and safety regulations in crossing from Europe to Asia.
In an opinion piece published yesterday in the New York Times, the instrument-rated pilot and US national correspondent for The Atlantic magazine explained the complex workings that govern the commercial aviation industry, and in doing so, sought to put the tragedy in perspective.
“Malaysia Airlines, its crew and passengers and the civil aviation system are the objects of this crime and tragedy. The finger-pointing should not be at them, but at the criminals,” he wrote.
Fallows explained that in order for the commercial aviation industry to run smoothly, airlines depend on national and international regulators to tell them about where they can and cannot go so as to lower the flight risks.
He pointed out that in the case of Flight MH17, the pilots and dispatchers would have been aware of that Ukrainian authorities had barred flying below a height of 32,000 feet across the eastern part of the country where pro-Russian separatists were engaged in warfare with the government, which he said was why the plane had kept to cruising at 33,000 feet over the space.
“Therefore when they crossed this zone at 33,000 feet, they were neither cutting it razor-close nor bending the rules, but doing what many other airlines had done, in a way they assumed was both legal and safe,” he wrote.
To illustrate the legal aspect, he compared the situation to driving at a speed of 63mph in a 65mph lane.
Fallows also pointed out that in terms of safety, the plane was travelling at cruising speed and at that altitude, it would be “beyond most earthbound criminal or terrorist threats” except for military-grade anti-aircraft weapons.
“The restricted zone over Ukraine was meant to protect against accidental fire or collateral damage. It didn’t envision a military attack,” he wrote.
The downing of Flight MH17 is the second air disaster for MAS, and coming just four months after the unexplained disappearance of Flight MH370 and all 239 people onboard has put the flag carrier and Malaysia’s civil aviation authority under global scrutiny.
Yesterday, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) rebuffed suggestions it was responsible for the shooting down of Flight MH17, pushing the buck to the individual member countries for the safety of their aircraft.
The Montreal-based UN body’s comments however has opened up debate over air safety and travel in an age of global terrorism.
The New York Times in a report yesterday noted that Russia’s Vladimir Putin, in his presidential Airbus, had crossed paths with the doomed MAS plane over Warsaw, Poland at 33,000 feet that same July 17 afternoon, some 37 minutes apart.
Online flight-tracking service Flightradar24 observed 66 other airlines had crossed Ukraine’s skies last week, along the same corridor that saw a surface-to-air missile take down the MAS plane.
According to its data, MAS flew there 48 times, fewer than Germany’s Lufthansa which criss-crossed the Crimean air space 56 times, Ukraine International Airline (62 times), Singapore Airlines (75 times) and Russia’s state-owned Aeroflot, which flew there a whopping 86 times last week.
