Hacker News Reader

Comment by korzun | Hacker News Reader

Malaysia Airlines should be shut down.

They can't keep track of their planes and can't properly investigate crashes.

Now they are sending a plane over an active war zone with air space restrictions (hint: even if its restricted to 10K, flying at 30K is not OK).

Feels like they are running a amateur shit show over there with little to no regulations.

I can picture bunch of ex-cab drivers who are no in charge of plane routing green lighting this flight in between their 100th smoke break.

View on HN

At the time the plane lost contact, Singapore Air had other flights near the MH flight, as did other airlines. Not sure MH can be blamed for that as they aren't the only airline flying in the area.

http://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/mh17/#3d6095b http://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/sq333#3d3c1a6

Also, commercial flights from Europe to India fly over Afghanistan every day, no one is concerned about that.

I can't load those links but the better example would be to see which carriers avoided the no-fly zone.}

Also, I don't think it's fair to compare Afghanistan and their weak and limited S2A technology to technology used by Russia and Ukraine.

MH, SQ, LH and TG all fly over Donetsk.

BA and NH appear to avoid it.

Interesting. Thanks.

If they can avoid it, then news like this:

> http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2014/07/ukrainian-milit...

Would make me go 'hey guys, let's avoid this route for now'.

Afghanistan doesn't have an antagonistic near-superpower supplying sophisticated arms.

Another Singapore flight that is even closer: http://flightaware.com/live/flight/SIA351

Malaysia Airlines is a respected, professional airline. We have no idea what happened to either flight, and it's rather unfair to suggest Malaysia Airlines should be "shut down."

I think that's the point - nobody has any idea what happened to these two Malaysia Airlines flights and /that's/ why they should be shut down.

EDIT: to clarify, I don't believe Malaysia Airlines should be shut down, just trying to clarify OPs comment.

You believe that Malaysia Airlines should know within about 90 minutes whether one of their planes was shot down by a surface-to-air missile?

Do you believe United Airlines would know such a thing?

Air France did not know what happened to AF447 for several years until the wreckage was found.

No airlines are in a position to investigate the cause of their crashes. These tasks fall to national agencies, such as the NTSB in the United States.

Airlines neither manufacture their jets, nor have access to all the territory they fly over. They merely operate them.

Unless you can point to some exceptional flaw in the management of Malaysia Airlines, it's absurd to suggest a well-respected airline should be shut down.

Well one of them happened literally minutes ago in a country at war currently. I think it's a little bold to expect them to immediately know why this place crashed.

We definitely have a pretty good idea what happened to this one.

I don't think they should be shut down at all, just stating. Both /seem/ to have been mostly out of the control of the airline, aside from flying over the area, which MH isn't the only one doing.

> Malaysia Airlines is a respected, professional airline.

Okay.

>On Friday, Malaysia Airlines CEO released some new information that could bolster the fire theory. Four days after denying that the plane had carried any hazardous materials, the CEO admitted that it was carrying a shipment of lithium-ion batteries in its cargo hold.

Also please don't call a company professional if it's sending planes over war zone with 200+ people on board.

> Also please don't call a company professional if it's sending planes over war zone with 200+ people on board.

Does this change your mind?

https://twitter.com/FlightCrisis/status/489806319717986305/p...

https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/489795658879348737/...

https://twitter.com/jc_stubbs/status/489815565868216320

Is Lufthansa a professional airline? Singpore Airlines? British Airways? They, along with virtually every airline, have all been routing flights through this part of Ukrainian airspace.

Then again, perhaps your casual association of Malaysian airline officials with "ex-cab drivers" tells us all we need to know about your biases here.

The reaction of "WTF, they shouldn't be flying over a war zone" only requires knowing that the plane was actually flying over a war zone, which is undisputed. It doesn't actually require this crash to be a result of that, it's merely a trigger for discussion and observation.

I don't think any commercial airliners fly at "30K". The last updates from Flight Aware show the airliner at 33,000 ft or about 10 km, which is a pretty standard cruising altitude.

K stands for 1000.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com