LONDON — On July 17, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashed in eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 passengers and crew members. Investigations continue, but it is widely assumed that the aircraft was brought down by a Russian-made surface-to-air missile fired by separatist rebels. While the earlier loss of another Malaysia Airlines plane, Flight 370, which disappeared over the Indian Ocean in March, remains a mystery, the menace to flights over conflict zones is all too apparent. Could this disaster have been avoided?
Ukraine’s chief of counterintelligence, Vitaly Nayda, admitted that as early as July 14, three days before Flight 17 was shot down, he knew that rebels had Buk missile systems capable of striking targets up to 70,000 feet (far beyond the usual 33,000 feet cruising altitude of jetliners). It was also common knowledge that at least seven military aircraft had been shot down in the preceding weeks, including a cargo plane traveling at about 21,000 feet — well beyond the range of less sophisticated shoulder-fired missiles.
Ukraine’s Civil Aviation Authority, or C.A.A., issued an advisory to pilots to increase their altitude, yet continued to allow commercial flights above 32,000 feet. All the warning signs were there, but Ukrainian officials were either unwilling or unable to acknowledge a worst-case scenario.
In retrospect, keeping the airspace over eastern Ukraine open was a catastrophic error, but was the C.A.A. properly informed by intelligence officials? And should such crucial decision making rest with the local aviation authority?
Recognizing the dangers, the International Civil Aviation Organization (I.C.A.O.), the United Nations’ aviation body, and the International Air Transport Association (I.A.T.A.), the airline industry’s main lobbying voice, met last week. The parties called for “urgent, practical measures” to safeguard the skies and inaugurated a special task force to debate whether the procedures for managing airspace over conflict zones should change.
While Flight 17 was struck at cruising altitude, takeoffs and landings are by far the most vulnerable stages of flight. In November 2002, an Israeli passenger jet operated by Arkia Airlines narrowly avoided being struck by militants linked to Al Qaeda while departing from Mombasa, Kenya; pilots saw two missiles streak past their plane.
Commercial airliner shoot-downs have largely been averted in the past thanks to two key factors. First, the military arsenals of rogue states are well documented and closely monitored by spy agencies. For example, North Korea’s penchant for firing ballistic missiles keeps its skies empty of almost all international carriers.
Second, when more nebulous actors like terrorists and rebel militias are believed to have limited missile capabilities, partial no-fly zones are imposed. In the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, American airlines are instructed to stay above 24,000 feet because of the threat posed by Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, an Islamist group that downed a military helicopter with a shoulder-fired missile in January.
This sort of risk assessment has generally forestalled attacks on civilian aircraft. But Flight 17 changed all that, exposing critical weaknesses in the way regulators share the intelligence needed to keep us safe. Further shoot-downs are virtually assured unless decisive action is taken by the industry.
The director general of I.A.T.A., Tony Tyler, has criticized the “gap in the system” that sent Flight 17 on its ill-fated flight path, and has called for an overhaul of how information about missile threats is collected and disseminated. Under the current system, national governments assess threats within their own airspace before making recommendations to domestic civil aviation authorities. International bodies like the European Aviation Safety Agency collate this information and issue advisories to airlines.
It is now clear that such sources cannot always be trusted to make objective judgments. Ukraine is only the most glaring example. Governments will not always deem it in the national interest to release sensitive — read, embarrassing — security assessments. Politicians often balk at measures that tarnish their reputation and reduce the overflight fees paid by airlines.
Perhaps mindful of this, airlines make in-house risk assessments beyond the patchwork of information they are fed by the various national authorities and international bodies. British Airways, for example, chose to reroute flights around eastern Ukraine back in March. Some 75 other carriers, however, were still sending about 400 flights a day into harm’s way until the loss of Flight 17.
To date, nothing has changed. The Iraqi C.A.A. still insists that its airspace is safe from the forces of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, despite the fact that ISIS fighters — who have freedom of movement between the two countries — have overrun army positions in eastern Syria. The Syrian government forces, like Ukraine’s rebels, have Buk missile systems supplied by Russia.
Many airlines are therefore avoiding Iraqi airspace. Emirates was the first to do so, in July, even as Etihad, another United Arab Emirates carrier, maintained that Iraqi skies were safe. (In August, Etihad suspended routes over northern Iraq, but insisted that there was no evidence that jihadis could bring down aircraft.) Both cannot be right; the lack of unanimity means that passengers are not being equally protected.
The I.C.A.O. and I.A.T.A. are rightly evaluating whether to create a new, global body that collates and distributes region-specific risk assessments to airlines. They recognize that a single, neutral source of information would be preferable to the existing mishmash of advisories. But they have no mandate to empower such a body, and governments that would seek to play down internal threats would not willingly disclose intelligence to third parties.
The onus of responsibility rests with democratically accountable states that have resources spread across the globe and command more responsive spy agencies. It is not a promising start that the United States has already distanced itself from the United Nations task force initiative. But if we do not want the risk of future Flight 17s, international travelers must not accept the flawed system.
Martin Rivers is an aviation journalist.