This shows exactly why dismissing something as "victim-blaming" is usually missing the point. You can't discuss stupidity of that concept in terms of the most common uses of the phrase, but hopefully people are not as emotionally charged about airplanes getting shot down.

Yes, it's obviously moral fault of whoever operated that BUK system. But flying over an active warzone where planes have already been shot down shows lack of practical wisdom. So while only one side gets to be called evil, the other side can be justly considered irresponsible.

No, not really. Military planes were shot down, yes, but those operated at much lower altitudes. It's damn hard to shoot down an aircraft flying at 10k feet, you need something like BUK to even be able to reach that high. That's why these fly levels are generally consider safe even over (low-tech) conflict areas; this isn't limited to UK.

More readily available AA weapontry is only good against low-flying targets and it was thought at the time that the "rebels" did not have high-end military equipment from Russia. That's an intelligence failure, granted, but not irresponsibility by the airline.

Nobody is blaming them for someone shooting a missile at them, but from here on I am going to check if I am going to be flying over an active warzone beforehand.

While I can understand your reasoning, what will you do if your plane's flight path does take you over a warzone? Will you stay home? Try to persuade the captain to alter the flight path? Try to persuade other passengers not to board the plane?

I think there's 0% chance of your ticket being refunded if you don't show up at the gate, and serious chance of finding yourself on a no-fly list if you do show up and refuse to board. Probably near 100% if you are vocal about why.

Keep in mind that most passengers of MH17 were not business travelers. This was at the start of the summer holidays, so many families were travelling together on a holiday. Even if you would have known the flight path, would you have canceled your family holiday (and lose the money) for the perceived risk? Keep in mind that even that day, 159 out of 160 civil flights crossed Ukraine succesfully.

And: it's not really so easy to define "active warzone". As said, hundreds if not thousands of commercial planes fly over conflict zones every day, successfully.

Just to pick a random example: Flight TK7900 IST-SIN is up in the air right now (19:32 GMT on Oct 13, 2015). For a picture of the route, see this.

http://tinyurl.com/obzlxxv

Over the past few hours, it crossed from Turkmenistan/Iran to Afghanistan a bit north of Herat, crossed the country, passed south of Kabul, then went on to the Pakistani tribal area south of Peshawar, and continued across the hostile Pakistani-Indian border just south of contested Jammu and Kashmir, and then continued over India. There's plenty of conflict in these areas.

Then it was on the Indian Ocean, far away from anyone who could rescue it should something happen to it. Right now it is passing Andaman Islands. If it were forced to land due to multiple engine failure, the passengers perhaps would meet the Sentinelese people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_people

And I think Turkish Airlines is perfectly OK to do all this. Should someone shoot down the plane, I know some people would blame the airline. But I would only blame those who shoot it down. It's not okay to shoot down airplanes. Commercial airplanes are not valid targets.

> But I would only blame those who shoot it down. It's not okay to shoot down airplanes. Commercial airplanes are not valid targets.

If only reality worked that way. In real war, everything is a potential target - sometimes civilians get hurt by mistake, other times because one side decides to take advantage of the "rules" above and e.g. hide weapons in hospitals.

In general, if an area of land is a warzone and it's known there are anti-aircraft missiles deployed, and there are confirmed shootdowns of aircrafts in the area, you don't fly over that area. Flying there shows lack of practical wisdom. You're betting lives over desperate people following some arbitrary rules and not making any mistake.

In general, exposing yourself willingly to significant danger is stupid, and if anything happens to you, you can't avoid some part of responsibility.

> if an area of land is a warzone and it's known there are anti-aircraft missiles deployed

But it was not known there was anti-aircraft missile capability until April 14th (a few days before the MH17 crime). You're making the exact logic fallacy that the DSB criticized in its report.

All incidents from before that Antonov downing on the 14th were done using MANPADS (i.e. shoulder-carried missile launchers). These don't reach high altitude. The information about the new capability wasn't relayed quickly enough to commercial aviation authorities (I don't think the DSB identified a reason for the delay).

Instead, the DSB argued that risk assessment for fly/no-fly decisions should not only include known risks, but should also account for unknown risks (say, the speculation that the rebels did have anti-aircraft capability).

(edit: although another source says that the rebels' STA capability was known since June 29th)

That seems unlikely: government planes were being shot down in the area starting in April (22/4 to be exact), months before the incident. Those planes were delivering military supplies and shooting at and bombing the separatists, so it's not like there was no reason to shoot them down. Before the MH17 incident, 17 planes were shot down in that area. As the report puts it "But none of the parties involved made any connection between the military developments and the risk to civil aviation". This is in fact pretty unfair because it doesn't mention that it was (and is) under the authority of the Ukranian government exclusively. Neither Russia, nor any of the separatist organisations could have closed the airspace if they wanted to.

The report is quite clear : the Ukrainian authorities were aware of the threat, and had good reason to close the airspace BEFORE this happened. This is in fact one of the few pieces of blame being laid out here.

That means the only real remaining question is whether the Ukrainian authorities were using commercial flights, and the lives of thousands of passengers as human shields to safeguard their military aviation in the area, were they trying to provoke Russia into shooting down commercial planes or was it merely a monumental fuckup ?

Flying a civilian plane at 10 km on its daily route is not "provocation".

It seems we'll keep seeing every attempt being made to shift the blame on Ukraine, not the ones who actually decided to pull the trigger. Russia is active in stopping an investigation to find out who it was. That tells me a lot.

Passenger planes routinely fly over conflict zones. A plane flying at >10 km cannot be mistaken for a fighter-bomber. Unless the operators of BUK were, well, drunk, which is still what I suspect, but equally irresponsible.

I don't think anyone is really trying to shift the blame. The operators of BUK deserve all the blame they can get. The point is whether or not assign additional blame to people responsible for routing the passenger plane over the conflict zone. Personally I say yes, they should be assigned some smaller but non-zero amount of blame.

I think both sides are to blame here. It's definitely questionable to fly over a warzone with a public passenger aircraft. Sooner or later something like this would have happened.

This doesn't mean the Russians shouldn't have cooperated better.

(BTW I'm Dutch.)

No, it's not "definitely" questionable. Public passenger aircraft fly over warzones all the time, also today.

I'm in no way "victim-blaming" . But I believe Malaysian Airlines are also to blame for the incident.

All I'm saying is the company flying over east Ukraine put its passengers in danger for the sake of saving fuel which I find as disgusting as the attack itself.

You're somehow suggesting that i'm a "putin-bot" and a russian troll which is insulting and ridiculous.