I didn’t want to be the first to say it, but I’m thinking the same thing. This is starting to look like some Ukrainian soldier had an itchy [del]trigger[/del] launch finger. That hardware is not the sort of thing an insurgent would have. It would have to be either the Ukrainian or Russian army. And since it was apparantly about 180 miles from the Russian border, I’m going to have to suspect the Ukrainian army, at least for the time being.
Sorry, but you’re wrong. Our honeymoon was in Jamaica, and we flew right over Cuba to get there.
At least they know where this one is.
I’ll see myself out.
It is my understanding that it was an eastern bound flight from Amsterdam. So it would make no sense for Ukrainian military to shoot it down unless you believe in elaborate conspiracy theories. The plane had already crossed Ukraine.
OK. I’ve been on a US Airways flight from Costa Rica to Charlotte that passed directly over Cuba. Dunno how they process the ATC fees.
My question on that, is how many planes have the Ukrainian Army shot down recently? Whose planes would they be shooting down? Russia’s? The Ukrainian Army knows better, Russia would love to have the Ukrainian Army unilaterally attack them as that’d let Putin reenact Chechnya or Georgia on the Ukrainians.
While the Ukrainian military certainly has air defense capabilities, I’m not sure that they have people on watch to shoot down planes at the moment. There’s little reason for that unless specific notification/orders were given that hostile planes were now operating in the country. Lots of civilian planes pass over Ukraine all the time, not to mention Ukrainian military planes. The Ukrainian military would have a lot of reasons to be cautious about shooting down planes, because I doubt the separatists have any/many planes at all. I’ve not been able to find any evidence that the Ukrainians have been contending with separatist planes, only that the Ukrainians have lost some planes to either separatist or Russian (covert) attack.
I’ve added some additional information to my post. Was your flight on an American carrier?
Sitting outside the Malaysian Embassy in NW DC. All quiet here. I imagine we’ll get busy soon.
Very good point.
Additionally earlier this week a Ukrainian transport plane (Antonov AN-26) was shot down in eastern Ukraine, either by “separatists” or from a missile actually fired from Russia. While it doesn’t fly as high as the airliner would have, there’s evidence it was shot by a longer range, radar guided missile.
I suppose it could have been launched by Ukrainian separatists who also just coincidentally are Russian Army out of uniform / wearing balaclavas.
- It was a flight heading towards Russia not towards Ukraine.
- A Ukrainian military transport plane was shot down just a few days ago close to the Russian border. Well above shoulder fired missile range.
- Just todaythere is word that a Russian military jet shot down a Ukrainian jet ovet Ukraine territory.
- Russia has provided military weapons and vehicles to the rebels. Many of which are probably Russian special forces.
Everything points to it being Russia’s fault.
CNN is showing pictures of local chuckleheads walking around on top of the wreckage.
Never discount the possibility of a simple fuckup.
This is a BUK system. (cite wikipedia) Basically, its a tank:
“The Buk-M1-2 TELAR uses the GM-569 chassis designed and produced by JSC MMZ (Mytishchi).[16] TELAR superstructure is a turret containing the fire control radar at the front and a launcher with four ready-to-fire missiles on top. Each TELAR is operated by a crew of four” CITE.
ONE bad tank commander can ruin your whole day… 
Not after this.
What a very sad day for all of the people on board and the families of those individuals as well as for the airline itself. Regardless of the political ramifications and reasons for this, many innocent people died today. Very tragic 
I don’t read Russian so I can’t translate this.
Supposedly, at the time the plane went down, the Separatists tweeted that they had just shot down a Ukraine jet. The tweet has since vanished. Supposedly, the thinking goes, the Separatists misidentified the Malaysian airliner as a Ukrainian plane.
This may all be speculation. It makes more sense than either Ukrainians or Russians or Ukrainian-Russians deliberately shooting up a Malaysian flight out of Amsterdam.
So, it’s starting to really look like Russian separatists using a BUK that shot it down. So says the Ukrainian Gov.
What a terrible year for Malaysian Airlines!
According to my back-of-the envelope calculations, the plane went down a couple hundred miles south of its projected flight path. The projected flight path would have barely skimmed Ukraine airspace and the actual crash was pretty close to the middle latitudes of the country.
Not proposing conspiracy theory here. It just seems like it would have been safer to route the flight along the great circle and thus avoid an area where people are shooting planes down a lot.
One of the Dutch passengers posted a picture of the plane before boarding on Facebook , with the text “here what it looks like, in case they lose this one too”