Originally posted by retox
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Malaysia T7 down!!
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Some aerial photos showing crash debris sites.
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An update on the latest claim form Russia, spread by state television and forum posters (in various countries): the first audio recording released by Ukraine has been determined to be fake by "analysts". They say 1) it is put together from different and mismatched audio files, and 2) the encoding date is July 16th (16.07), the evening before the downing of MH17.
In English by some guy:
Official news on one of Russia's TV channels (in Russian):
Potentially any merit in this? I'm not a computer specialist, but I'm pretty sure one can manipulate the date of an audio recording, no?
Another claim is the video of the BUK system being carried on a tractor trailer is actually in an Ukrainian controlled town further west, and the direction it is heading in is West and not East.
So far, the Kremlin has not commented on these claims, as far as I know.
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Originally posted by Black Ram View PostAn update on the latest claim form Russia, spread by state television and forum posters (in various countries): the first audio recording released by Ukraine has been determined to be fake by "analysts". They say 1) it is put together from different and mismatched audio files, and 2) the encoding date is June 16th (16.07), the evening before the downing of MH17.
In English by some guy:
Official news on one of Russia's TV channels (in Russian):
Potentially any merit in this? I'm not a computer specialist, but I'm pretty sure one can manipulate the date of an audio recording, no?
Another claim is the video of the BUK system being carried on a tractor trailer is actually in an Ukrainian controlled town further west, and the direction it is heading in is West and not East.
So far, the Kremlin has not commented on these claims, as far as I know.
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Originally posted by BoeingBobby View Postretox, Are you trying to imply that Malaysian Airlines is complacent in this in any way?
The argument against my belief is that "authorities allowed it" and "others did it".
Many major airlines, however, including Qantas, Cathay Pacific, British Airways, Air France, Korean Air, Air Berlin, Asiana, and China Air - all saw the risk. There was plenty of warning. These airlines prioritized safety and routed around the area. They spent a great deal of money and tied up their assets (more flight time) for the safety of their passengers and crew. Remember this the next time you search out the "cheapest flight".
If you praise them for their actions, you must hold accountable those who ignored the warnings.
At FL330, MH17 skirted only 1000 feet above a very active war zone where 12 AC had been shot down recently and 2 were downed in the previous week. It was known that missiles could easily reach above FL320. It is also common sense that Putin's rebels, between shots of Пятизвёздная, are not exactly to be trusted to make great wartime decisions.
Present this flight plan at the gate and ask passengers if they still would like to board.
Through his VK.com account, Russia’s version of Facebook, the self-proclaimed defense minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Igor Girkin — who goes by the nom de guerre Igor Strelkov — boasted about shooting down a plane."We did warn you — do not fly in our sky," he wrote.
Ignoring that, the only 2 reasons to continue on this route would be cost and time. You make a bet that you will be lucky enough to avoid the obvious danger so you can save money and time. It's a high stakes bet. They lost. They can try to say they are completely shocked by the result. Would that not then make them either simply ignorant or incompetent and just as culpable?
Now imagine it is several hours past the downing of MH17. French (and other) officials advise you to avoid Ukraine in light of this horrible tragedy. Details are a bit sketchy but a plane has been shot down. YOUR PLANE has been shot down. As you board flight MH21 from CDG to the same intended destination that MH17 never reached, do you:
A. Select a route to avoid Ukraine.
B. Fly directly over Ukraine to save money and time. But maybe we shouldn't make the announcement to the pax, " if you look out to your left, you will see what happened to one of our previous flights over Ukraine."
They picked B - Malaysian Airlines was the only non-Russian carrier to continue through Ukraine in the hours after MH17.
If I take my family to a war zone, I am responsible for what happens.
Other random reasons from my previous posts:
"The Malaysian plane was flying on an active route used by commercial airlines every day. Hours before the crash, Russia closed four airways near the Ukrainian border, including one that was a continuation of Flight 17’s route."
"A Russian notice issued Wednesday declared that the airway closings were necessary “due to combat actions on the territory of the Ukraine near the state border with the Russian Federation.”The closings were effective at midnight Wednesday — just hours before Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 took off. Because they were over Russian territory, these closings did not cover the area in Ukraine where Flight 17 crashed. But the plane was flying toward the closed areas, and it was not clear why the airline or Eurocontrol would have approved its flight plan in the face of such warnings."
"Mikael Robertsson, a co-founder of FlightRadar24, a live flight-tracker service, said that some 300 to 400 commercial aircraft had flown the airways over eastern Ukraine each day before the war, but that in recent months the traffic had fallen by at least half.“Some airlines chose to use other routes,” he said."
They even continued to fly the route AFTER their own plane, MH17 went down!
"Flightaware.com*shows most commercial flights now appear to be avoiding airspace over most of Ukraine.*In the region, only three commercial aircraft are seen flying on Flightaware.com: *two Russian airliners, as of 1335ET, flying north over Crimea, and Malaysia Airlines Flight 21 heading to Kuala Lumpur from Paris (CDG) over western Ukraine."
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The linked article is horribly written but Russia's Minister of Defense has clearly sparked up the propaganda machine.
"In a statement on Monday, Russia's ministry of defense began laying the case for blame on the West.It claims it saw MH17 detour from its route at the same time a Ukrainian warplane flew overhead and a U.S. satellite flew over Ukraine. And it said Ukraine had four SA-11 BUK missile systems on the ground in separatist territory.The ministry claimed that Russia not delivered deliver any SA-11 BUK missile systems to separatists in Ukraine, "or any other weapons."The U.S., on the other hand,*asserts*that it has "detected an increasing amount of heavy weaponry to separatist fighters crossing the border from Russia into Ukraine" in addition to*gathering "information indicating that Russia is providing training to separatist fighters at a facility in southwest Russia, and this effort included training on air defense systems."Russia's defense ministry also said the military has not detected the launch of any missiles near MH17's flight path, and asked the U.S. to share images "if they have them."
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Yes, July - thanks.
We know the US says they have evidence, and hopefully soon it will be presented to the public. I feel they are giving Putin the chance to tell what happened.
It looks like it was the rebels, but so far there is no official evidence. We had the audio recording, which is now under attack. I just keep wondering how credible could the claim about it being fake be.
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Russian media versions of the crash of MH17:
Did you know Malaysia Air Flight 17 was full of corpses when it took off from Amsterdam? Did you know that, for some darkly inexplicable reason, on July 17, MH17 moved off the standard flight path that it had taken every time before, and moved north, toward rebel-held areas outside Donetsk? Or that the dispatchers summoned the plane lower just before the crash? Or that the plane had been recently reinsured? Or that the Ukrainian army has air defense systems in the area? Or that it was the result of the Ukrainian military mistaking MH17 for Putin’s presidential plane, which looks strangely similar?
Did you know that the crash of MH17 was all part of an American conspiracy to provoke a big war with Russia?
Well, it’s all true—at least if you live in Russia, because this is the Malaysia Airlines crash story that you’d be seeing.
As the crisis surrounding the plane crash deepens and as calls for Vladimir Putin to act grow louder, it’s worth noting that they’re not really getting through to Putin’s subjects. The picture of the catastrophe that the Russian people are seeing on their television screens is very different from that on screens in much of the rest of the world, and the discrepancy does not bode well for a sane resolution to this stand-off.
Western media has been vacillating for days between calling Putin a murderer and peppering their coverage with allegedlys, telling the heart-rending tales of the victims, scrounging for anonymous leaks to link the Russians to the downed jet, and punditizing about exit ramps.
But in Russia, television—most of it owned or controlled by the Kremlin—is trying to muddy the water with various experts who insist that there is no way that an SA-11 missile system could possibly have downed a plane flying that high. And, mind you, this is not part of a larger debate of could they, or couldn’t they; this is all of Russian television and state-friendly papers pushing one line: The pro-Russian separatists we’ve been supporting all these months couldn’t have done this. Watching some of these Russian newscasts, one comes away with the impression of a desperate defense attorney scrounging for experts and angles, or a bad kid caught red-handed by the principal, trying to twist his way out of a situation in which he has no chance.
And that’s when they’re not simply peddling conspiracy theories, which have become a kind of symbiotic feedback loop between state TV and the most inventive corners of the Internet. The best of the bunch is, of course, an elaborate one: MH17 is actually MH370, that Malaysia Airlines flight that disappeared into the Indian Ocean. According to this theory, the plane didn’t disappear at all, “it was taken to an American military base, Diego-Garcia.”
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We will never know the answers to these questions - perhaps they are on Lois Lerner's lost hard drive - but when you take a few steps back and view this, it is highly possible that this was "allowed to happen" by the Ukraine. The motive, of course, is to draw attention, to damage Putin.
Questions for the acting gov't in Ukraine:
1. You admitted you had known (for at least 3 days) about both the existence and the capabilities of the BUK system in your country. You released surveiled audio from the cell communications of the rebels on several occasions which indicates you have a high level of intelligence as it relates to the rebels and their actions. You are aware of the heavy amount of air traffic over your country and thus the high potential for disaster. You closed the airspace only below FL320 which, given your intel was, at best, arbitrary. Why did you not close the airpace completely.
2. There are indications that your officials share intel with the US gov't on a regular basis. What details, related to this incident, had you shared with the US gov't and at what level?
3. Was the US gov't involved in your decision to leave the airspace open?
4. If you did not share this information with the US gov't, during that 3 day period, why?
5. Did anyone within your gov't discuss the possibility that this could happen? At what level? What was the argument against closing the airspace?
6. Did the US gov't, in any way, argue to leave the airspace open?
7. Did ATC ever discuss this issue with other officials, which ones?
8. Was ATC notified of the gov't intel. If not, why? If so, what was their response? How were they instructed to deal with the situation?
9. What information did you share with Eurocontrol? If none, why?
10. If you provided your intel to Eurocontrol, what was their response?
11. If this intel was available and not shared with ATC, the US, or Eurocontrol, who had it and why did they decide to ignore it?
Their only excuse would be that they are barely holding shit together as it is and that their whole gov't is broken but I have to believe that at least ATC gave this some thought.
Questions for the US gov't:
1. With the tremendous network of assets in place (surely we are watching this area very closely) to "know and see everything" what was known about the BUK launchers in advance of this disaster.
2. Who knew about it?
3. Within the US, who did they share it with?
4. If nothing was known, what were the breakdowns?
5. Was our intel provided to Ukraine? To Eurocontrol? If not, why?
6. Did anyone within the US advise closing this airspace (at least to the extent permitted by the FAA)?
7. If so, who ultimately decided to leave it open?
8. If the US gov't was ignorant of it all, what changes will be made so that we may obtain such intelligence in the future?
9. If our information is, in fact, non-existent and we were unable to track any of this in the days that preceded MH17, why would we not, out of caution, have just closed the airspace (to the extent allowed by the FAA) simply because we knew Putin was arming the rebels with weapons and that there were news reports of their ability to exceed FL320?
And hey, Eurocontrol, what's your story. The airlines are not supposed to know better than the governing authority. Why did so many major airlines make the decision that you did not?
"Tenerife moment", this should never happen again!
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Wondering if this writer is being frivolous:
Plus, flying around Ukraine is a major pain: The country is right in the middle of a common direct route between Europe and southeast Asia. Longer routes mean more fuel and more chances for delays, so cost-conscious airlines avoid such maneuvers whenever they can.
Major pain? Seems to me losing an aircraft is a bigger pain, much more pain than paying for more fuel. And on the heels of a disappearing plane, will travelers want to fly Malaysia Airlines at ALL? I wouldn't now that I know their management likes to "take chances".
Addendum. Yes, for sure, with Ukrainian planes going down, the air space should have been closed to all commercial aviation. The Malaysian GOVERNMENT should have told the airline never to fly that airspace so long as hostilities were active. A lot of governments screwed up major on this whole thing.
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Are none of you interested in placing any blame at the main party responsible for this tragedy, the people or persons who fired an advanced radar controlled anti-aircraft missile at a civilian airliner?
These sound like the same old tropes used to excuse the US Navy shoot down of Iran Air 655.
Yes in hindsight that airspace should have been avoided and it was a high risk area to fly over. But lets not beat around the bush here, whoever fired that missile A. was not intending to shoot down an airliner B. is ultimately the main bearer of responsibility for the deaths of all those innocent people.
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Agreement on black boxes:
Malaysia Says Rebels to Hand Over Jet's Black Boxes
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Monday that he'd reached an agreement with Ukraine separatists to receive two black boxes transmitters from downed Malaysian Airlines flight 17. The boxes will be handed over to a Malaysian team in Donetsk Monday night, Razak said. Rebel leader Alexander Borodai Borodai has also agreed to move 282 victims' bodies, currently on a refrigerated train in Torez, to the town of Kharkiv. They will then be taken to the Netherlands, home to most of the victims, where forensic work will be completed.
Razak said the separatists would also guarantee independent international investigators' safe access to the crash site to begin a full investigation of the incident. Razak stressed that "there remains a number of steps required" before arrangement is completed. "Only then can the investigation into MH17 truly begin; only then can the victims be afforded the respect they deserve," Razak said. "We need to know what caused the plane to crash, and who was responsible for it, so that justice may be done."
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Originally posted by EconomyClass View PostWondering if this writer is being frivolous:
http://www.wired.com/2014/07/why-pla...-over-ukraine/
Major pain? Seems to me losing an aircraft is a bigger pain, much more pain than paying for more fuel. And on the heels of a disappearing plane, will travelers want to fly Malaysia Airlines at ALL? I wouldn't now that I know their management likes to "take chances".
Addendum. Yes, for sure, with Ukrainian planes going down, the air space should have been closed to all commercial aviation. The Malaysian GOVERNMENT should have told the airline never to fly that airspace so long as hostilities were active. A lot of governments screwed up major on this whole thing.
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In addition to a negotiated handover of the black boxes an agreement was reached on the release of the crash bodies:
At a news briefing in Kiev late Monday afternoon, Deputy Prime Minister Volodymr Groysman, who is leading the Ukrainian government’s response to the jetliner downing, said a train carrying bodies in four refrigerated rail cars from the town of Torez would go to Kharkiv, in northeast Ukraine, outside the rebel-held area. The train departed at 7 p.m. local time for a journey that was expected to take hours.
More than half the victims of the Amsterdam-to-Kuala Lumpur flight were Dutch, and the others came from more than half a dozen countries.
Mr. Groysman said that 282 bodies had been found and loaded onto the train, as well as dozens of body parts from as many as 16 other victims, suggesting that officials believed they had recovered most of the remains of the passengers and crew from the Boeing 777. He said that from Kharkiv, the bodies would be flown to Amsterdam, where they would be taken to a laboratory with the latest forensic technology.
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