Claim: 'Kyiv is the mother of all Russian Cities'

oscarBravo wrote: »

Because - the dazzling clarity of hindsight aside -The airspace below FL320 was restricted; it was travelling at FL330. That's factually incorrect. The same flight flew over Donetsk the previous day.

They did?
Am I reading the above pic from bbc incorrectly- it does not appear that way?

OB wrote:

it had no compelling reason not to be.

Hmmm it is firmly well established that they did? Again I don't understand - are you saying that that area was considered 'not risky' because clearly it was. Rebels were shooting down or attempting to shoot down aircraft almost daily for the period leading up to the tragedy.


Background from wiki
On 3 March 2014, Korean Air and Asiana Airlines "stopped flying over Ukraine airspace ... because of security concerns."[53] Aeroflot, Lufthansa, Singapore Airlines and others would continue overflying eastern Ukraine until after MH17 was shot down.[54] Later, in April the International Civil Aviation Organization warned governments that there was "the possible existence of serious risks to the safety of international civil flights" over Ukraine. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration issued restrictions on flights over Crimea just south of MH17's route, and advised airlines flying over the rest of Ukraine to "exercise extreme caution due to the continuing potential for instability."[55][56]

Subsequently several Ukrainian military aircraft have been downed. On 14 June a Ukrainian Air Force Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft was shot down on approach to Luhansk International Airport, all 49 people on board died. After that incident, on 29 June, Russian news agencies reported that separatists had access to a Buk missile system after taking control of a Ukrainian air defence base A-1402[57][58][59] (possibly the former location of the 156th Anti-Aircraft Rocket Regiment (156 zrp), Ukrainian Air Force). On the same day, the Donetsk People's Republic claimed possession of such a system[58] in a since-deleted tweet.[60] On 14 July a Ukrainian military An-26 transport aircraft flying at 21,000 feet (6,400 m) was shot down, allegedly using a Buk missile system.[61][62] U.S. officials later said evidence suggested the aircraft had been fired on from inside Russian territory.[63] On 16 July another Ukrainian military aircraft, a Sukhoi Su-25 close air support aircraft, was shot down, and Ukrainian government officials accused the Russian military of downing the aircraft with an air-to-air missile fired by a MiG-29 jet in Russia, while a spokesman for Russia's Defence Ministry rejected those accusations as absurd.[64][65][66]

On 1 July Ukrainian officials advised pilots not to fly below 26,000 feet (7,900 m) over eastern Ukraine.[67] On 14 July Ukrainian officials increased that limit to 32,000 feet (9,800 m) over eastern Ukraine.[67]

On 15 July, following his visit to Kiev, Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Radosław Sikorski warned about the dangers posed by the continued Russian military support for pro-Russian separatists, especially ground-to-air missiles. "These are mobile rockets whose sale is governed by international rules and they are forbidden from being supplied to non-state groups, because that creates the possibility of the proliferation of these kinds of weapons, which creates a danger to civil aviation around the world," he said.[68] On 17 July Russia closed more than a dozen airways at various altitudes.[69] On the same day an unnamed Associated Press journalist saw a Buk launcher in Snizhne, a town in the Donetsk Oblast, approximately 16 kilometres (10 miles) southeast of the crash site. The reporter also saw seven separatist tanks at a filling station near the town.[70] Also, on 17 July, an unconfirmed phone call between Sergei Nikolaevich Petrovskiy (officer of Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian Federation, Deputy Chief of Igor Girkin) and a militant took place where they discussed where to unload and place a Buk missile system.[64]

robindch wrote: »

Well, it depends on what you mean by evidence - there are social media accounts which boasted of having the missile systems suspected of bringing down the jet, as well as the hurrah's of the gunmen in between the time that they'd shot down a jet, and the time when they figured out that it was a passenger jet. And the fact of the deletion of this information very quickly indeed. There have been numerous leaked phonecalls between various gunmen and people in Russia explaining that they'd shot down a passenger jet. And there have been pictures of a Buk heading out of Ukraine that evening and seemingly arriving in Russia. There are pictures of plane parts with what appear to be multiple punctures consistent with an external explosion. These data are out in the public domain.

The US has additionally claimed that it has evidence which indicates that a missile was launched from gunmen-controlled territory at the same time that contact was lost with the jet. It hasn't released this evidence, no doubt concerned that it doesn't want Russia to know what they're looking with.

One can also, to a certain extent, infer from the actions of the Russian media (theories which are crackpot even by the standards of Russian news), government (blaming Ukraine immediately) and the Moscow-backed gunmen (a plane stuffed with corpses, disrupting the cleanup and the evidence collection, most recently with earth-moving equipment).

If these multiple lines are to be be discarded, then I'm not all that sure what could constitute "real, actual evidence" short of -- say -- multiple, continuous HD videos appearing of an identifiable pro-Russian gunman hopping into a Buk which then launches a missile which then explodes near a plane at FL330, then MH17 tumbling from the sky. I think there's enough evidence out there to point the finger, with a fair degree of certainty, in one direction only.

Well apparently the social media account is highly questionable see here -
http://www.vox.com/2014/7/17/5913089/did-this-ukrainian-rebel-commander-take-credit-for-shooting-down-the/in/5677250

I haven't seen the evidence the US presented for claiming the launch came from rebel held territory; have you?
I haven't heard them explicitly say it was rebel territory either?

That leaves the leaked phone call which does seem legitimate and is the most convincing aspect of it all but with US heavily invested I can't discount the idea that it could be faked. However as stated earlier I'm leaning towards accepting it as true.
What would be nice however is verified satellite imagery of blast signatures and or black recordings that vindicate Ukrainian flight controllers / or an admission or concrete explanation from Moscow as to who did it.

oscarBravo wrote: »

That grey line goes over Donetsk and agrees with the information I posted. The "previous ten days" image painted a completely different and completely inaccurate picture.

What? No it doesn't - what are you looking at?
Flight MH17 is the only that went that far north - pilots and analysts are trying to figure out why.
All the others essentially avoided that area of Donestk.

[URL="http://www.businessinsider.com/malaysia-flight-17-took-different-route-2014-7#ixzz387zZG4Fd
http://www.businessinsider.com/malaysia-flight-17-took-different-route-2014-7"]Headline>Aviation Expert: Malaysia Flight Took A Significantly Different Route Than The Usual Course[/URL]

OB wrote:

Yes, it tends to be clear after a plane has been shot down that there was a risk of a plane being shot down.

OK - is this a sarcastic comment or a reference to the planes shot down before MH17? Its hard to know - with your tone it's as if you believe I'm am trying to obscure something or make some excuse for the tragedy or, as you bizarrely put it, blame the victims. The most cursory reading of my posts shows this, extremely odd outlook, as being emphatically untrue.

OM wrote:

Flying over Donetsk was considered risky, but a pragmatic risk assessment concluded that, on balance, it was a risk worth taking. Landing at Lukla airport is risky, but planes do it all the time.

Utterly ridiculous - you completely ignored the part about rebels attempting continuously to shoot down planes in that exact area.
You ignore the others planes that flew well north of that area. In comparing it to Lukla you're ignoring the part about the war also, a minor point at this stage I suppose.

oscarBravo wrote: »

The twitter feed you linked has that picture (which I now realise was invented from whole cloth by the twitter user in question;

You're digging a deeper whole here for yourself.
He didn't fabricate it whole cloth - the data has been used repeatedly by people all pulling it from the same source - flightaware.

http://www.businessinsider.com/malaysia-flight-17-took-different-route-2014-7

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10975524/Crashed-MH17-flight-was-300-miles-off-typical-course.html

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ukraine-plane-crash/why-was-malaysia-airlines-mh17-flying-over-ukraine-time-money-n159161

OB wrote:

I was asking for a source because I thought that he had obtained it elsewhere) along with a link to a flightaware.com page that shows the route MH17 took on the days prior to as well as after the incident. The flight paths on the image specify "2014-07-17" and "10 flights before 2014-07-17", which I understand to mean the path that MH17 took on the previous ten days.

Yes....

OB wrote:

If you're claiming that the picture shows the ten flights through that airspace prior to MH17 on the same day, you're saying something other than what the source you're quoting is saying.

Nope not saying that - you've lost me somewhat....

The Twitter user links to a list of flight paths taken by MH17 on different days. Not surprisingly, the paths after April 17 deviate significantly to the south, avoiding Ukraine completely. The paths prior to April 17 all take the same route over Donetsk. That article claims that FlightAware shows MH17 taking a more southerly course in the days prior to the shooting down. It doesn't. There were a lot of planes shot down above FL320, were there?

No the point is that it was routed differently than usual
The initial comments were that this was because of fuel consumption - this was nonsense - that flight path didn't save money.
The second assumption was weather but noone can find any data to back this up.
Here's a pilot point of view

Pilot wrote:

Robert Mark, a commercial pilot who edits Aviation International News Safety magazine, said that most Malaysia Airlines flights from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur normally travelled along a route significantly further south than the plane which crashed.

Malaysia Airlines has insisted its plane travelled on an "approved route" used by many other carriers.

But Mr Mark said: "I can only tell you as a commercial pilot myself that if we had been routed that way, with what's been going on in the Ukraine and the Russian border over the last few weeks and months, I would never have accepted that route.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/malaysia-flight-17-took-different-route-2014-7#ixzz388Jn9ygg

OB wrote:

If it was so predictable that a passenger jet was going to be shot down over Ukraine, why do you suppose the pilot flew that route?

Nobody said predictable - everyone, analysts, pilots, airlines, said risky.