Federal aviation authorities in April issued a warning for US commercial flights to avoid the dangerous airspace over parts of war-torn Ukraine as fighting with separatist militants escalated.
And other international air-control bodies issued similar alerts — including an order from the Ukrainian government that commercial airliners fly at altitudes higher than 32,000 feet when passing over the country.
The concern was that the passenger jets filled with tourists and business travelers could be mistaken for Ukrainian air force planes shuttling supplies to government troops.
Pro-Russia rebels have shot down several transport and Ukrainian Air Force planes, including an An-26 that was brought down earlier this week over the Luhansk region in a crash that killed two crew members.
The Ukrainian government also said that an air force Su-25 jet was shot down by a missile fired from a Russian plane Wednesday, forcing the pilot to bail out.
But authorities said the doomed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 — which went down at about 9:20 a.m. New York time, killing all 298 aboard — was not in restricted airspace when it went down.
“Based on the information currently available, it is believed that the airspace that the aircraft was traversing was not subject to restrictions,” the International Air Transport Association, which represents airlines worldwide, said in a statement.
The Malaysia Airlines jet was flying at 33,000 feet — 1,000 higher than the Ukrainian no-fly zone — but still within range of the sophisticated Russian-made anti-aircraft rocket that officials say took the plane down.
The European Cockpit Association, a group that represents pilots, said in a statement that the jet’s route was the most common one for commercial jets from Europe to Southeast Asia.
But following the crash, the European air-traffic-control body Eurocontrol barred all flights over eastern Ukraine.
And US authorities said US airlines have also agreed to avoid airspace near the Russia-Ukraine border following the crash.
“The FAA is monitoring the situation to determine whether further guidance is necessary,” the US agency said.
The FAA had warned commercial flights to avoid airspace over Crimea and the Black Sea in April when hostilities heated up between Ukraine’s military and pro-Russian rebels.
The area prohibited from overflights is known as the “Simferopol Flight Information Region,” which is near the city of Simferopol in Crimea. Russia annexed that territory in March.
The warning did not apply to the area where the jet was shot down Thursday along Ukraine’s eastern border with Russia.
Even before Eurocontrol banned commercial flights, many major international carriers — including Germany’s Lufthansa, the Netherlands’ KLM and Russian Transaero Airlines — announced they were rerouting flights around Ukraine in light of the Malaysia Airlines shoot-down.
FlightRadar24 reported that many other airlines have also announced that they will stop flying over the area.
