Malaysian Airlines Flight 17

[blazindw]

Reports are coming in that Malaysian Airlines flight 17, traveling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, has been shot down in Ukraine. The AP is quoting someone from within the Ukrainian government that's saying the plane was shot down with a ground-to-air missile from Russia. Obviously, all of the networks are working to confirm.

Sad, sad news coming out of Ukraine.

[alteran]

Reports are coming in that Malaysian Airlines flight 17, traveling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, has been shot down in Ukraine. The AP is quoting someone from within the Ukrainian government that's saying the plane was shot down with a ground-to-air missile from Russia. Obviously, all of the networks are working to confirm.

Sad, sad news coming out of Ukraine.

NYTimes has a blog with lots of updates.

http://news.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/0...sh-in-ukraine/

[Jim3k]

WaPo says that the rebels probably misidentified the plane as a Ukrainian military turboprop.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...348_story.html

Scroll down.

[tteettimes]

Of course Puddin' knows nothing about this

[mph]

WaPo says that the rebels probably misidentified the plane as a Ukrainian military turboprop.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...348_story.html

Scroll down.

What a tragedy. It's hard to believe they thought a 777 flying at 33,000 ft was an An-26 with a much lower service ceiling.

[Newton_14]

What a tragedy. It's hard to believe they thought a 777 flying at 33,000 ft was an An-26 with a much lower service ceiling.

Yeah I'm not buying that either.

Thanks to the OP for putting this up. Been busy all night and had no idea until I saw this thread.

[A-Tex Devil]

Yeah I'm not buying that either.

Thanks to the OP for putting this up. Been busy all night and had no idea until I saw this thread.

I read somewhere that those Buk's are pretty much set on autopilot in a war zone. Plane of right size at certain altitude flies through its space and a missile is fired. If MH17 was at too low of altitude or there was some other malfunction, bam. The scary thing is that these yokels in Eastern Ukraine playing fake army probably can't program a Buk without help.

[OldPhiKap]

To ask a dumb question -- what the hell is a civilian plane doing flying over an active war zone?

[Jim3k]

An AN-26 has a ceiling of 24,600. If the shooter is on automatic, I think that a wannabe soldier could easily make such a mistake.

What I'm not buying is the claim that the rebels didn't possess the Buks missile. Plus, I've read that some journos actually saw one in their possession.

[blazindw]

To ask a dumb question -- what the hell is a civilian plane doing flying over an active war zone?

It wasn't just Malaysian Air flights that were doing that route. Apparently, it's a major route for airlines going from Europe to SE Asia. However, the FAA has banned all U.S. planes from flying through that region since April. I'm sure that other airlines/nation aviation administrations had made similar prohibitions, but not all. Watching MSNBC, they mentioned earlier today that flights that were in the air that were supposed to use a similar flight plan were making the decision to circumvent the eastern part of Ukraine so as not to fly through the same area where MH17 went down.

[sue71, esq]

This is beyond tragic. A woman lost her brother and sister-in-law on the still-missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 from earlier this spring, and now her stepdaughter in this incident with Flight 17.

[weezie]

Anybody else think it is extremely ominous that Putin has said, to my knowledge, zip-nothing about the crash?

[bjornolf]

Anybody else think it is extremely ominous that Putin has said, to my knowledge, zip-nothing about the crash?

They had a scroll on the news the day it happened that said Putin talked to Obama about it on the phone, but nothing else was mentioned.

[YmoBeThere]

This topic does make me miss the PPB.

[Jim3k]

Channel 11, Raleigh-Durham's WTVD has reported that one of the passengers had a connection to Duke's medical research.

The director of Duke University's Global Health Institute says his colleague and longtime friend was committed to high quality science and had a fierce passion for fighting AIDS globally.

Duke Professor Dr. Michael Merson was collaborating on a new initiative with Joep Lange, a passenger and scientist who died on board Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. In fact, Lange, a past president of the International AIDS Society, had just visited Duke last month with a team of eight other researchers.

"If you worked in an industry making any retrovirus drugs, if you were a physician, if you were a researcher, if you were a public health advocate you wanted Joep on your side," Merson said. "Joep was usually right and he was so well respected."

[weezie]

Horribly appalling how rebel cowards are treating the remains of those murdered innocent souls. And no foreign observers can get to the site still?

[Jim3k]

Horribly appalling how rebel cowards are treating the remains of those murdered innocent souls. And no foreign observers can get to the site still?

While I'm very uneasy about what the Seps are doing with the bodies, I think we should understand that due to lack of morgue facilities, putting them in refrigerated freight cars is probably a decent workaround. Leaving almost 300 bodies in the open surely creates a public health hazard. Refrigerating the corpses will lessen that risk.

I only wish the rebels would confirm that to be their purpose.

[wilson]

This is beyond tragic. A woman lost her brother and sister-in-law on the still-missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 from earlier this spring, and now her stepdaughter in this incident with Flight 17.

How 'bout this guy, who was booked on Flight 370 AND Flight 17, but changed his itinerary both times?

[BD80]

How 'bout this guy, who was booked on Flight 370 AND Flight 17, but changed his itinerary both times?

I think he should be interrogated in depth ...

[bjornolf]

I think he should be interrogated in depth ...

I'd be buying lottery tickets.