Malaysia Airlines Flight 17

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17

9M-MRD at Leonardo da Vinci–Fiumicino Airport in October 2011
Incident
Date	17 July 2014
Summary	Fired at with surface-to-air missile; under investigation.
Site	Near Hrabove, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine 48°7′56″N 38°39′19″E
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Boeing 777-200ER
Operator	Malaysia Airlines
Registration	9M-MRD
Flight origin	Amsterdam Airport Schiphol
Destination	Kuala Lumpur International Airport
Passengers	283
Crew	15
Fatalities	298
Survivors	0

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17/MAS17) was a scheduled international passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur that was shot down by a surface-to-air missile on 17 July 2014 near Hrabove in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, about 40 km (25 mi) from the Ukraine–Russia border. All 283 passengers and 15 crew members on board the Boeing 777-200ER aircraft were killed. The crash occurred in the conflict zone of the ongoing Donbass insurgency.

Ukrainian Interior Ministry advisor Anton Gerashchenko stated that the aircraft was shot down at an altitude of 10,000 m (33,000 ft) by a Buk surface-to-air missile. American intelligence officials said the plane was shot down by a missile of indeterminate origin. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called it an "act of terrorism." In response, pro-Russian separatist rebels accused the Ukrainian government of shooting down the plane. Ukrainian security services claimed to have intercepted two phone conversations in which pro-Russian separatists discuss having just shot down a civilian plane with alleged Russian intelligence officers. Russia's Defence Ministry reported that a Ukrainian Buk missile system radar was operational in the area where the Malaysian plane was downed.

The crash was the second disaster for Malaysia Airlines in 2014; Flight 370 (9M-MRO) had disappeared on 8 March en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. With 298 deaths, MH17 was the deadliest aviation incident since the 11 September 2001 attacks and the deadliest-ever Boeing 777 hull loss. It is also the deadliest incident in the history of Malaysia Airlines.

Aircraft

Flight 17 was operated with a Boeing 777-2H6ER, serial number 28411, registration 9M-MRD. The 84th Boeing 777 produced, it first flew on 17 July 1997, exactly 17 years before the incident, and was delivered new to Malaysia Airlines on 29 July 1997. Powered by two Rolls-Royce Trent 800 engines and configured to carry 282 passengers, the aircraft had logged more than 43,000 hours of flight time, including 6,950 takeoffs and landings, before the crash.

The Boeing 777 entered commercial service on 7 June 1995; as of June 2014, there were more than 1,200 in service. Aviation experts say it has one of the best safety records in commercial aircraft. Only four other 777s have suffered a hull loss: British Airways Flight 38 in January 2008; a cockpit fire in a parked EgyptAir 777-200 at Cairo International Airport in 2011; and Asiana Airlines Flight 214 in July 2013, in which three people died. Another Malaysia Airlines 777, Flight 370 (registration 9M-MRO), went missing on 8 March 2014 and was still being searched for at the time of Flight 17's crash.

Passengers and crew

People on board by nationality

Nation	Number
Australia	28
Belgium	4
Canada	1
Germany	4
Indonesia	12
Malaysia	44
Netherlands	189
New Zealand	1
Philippines	3
Romania	1
United Kingdom	9
United States	1
Total	298

There were 283 passengers and 15 crew members aboard; all perished. The 15 crew members were all Malaysian. More than half the passengers were from the Netherlands. Authorities initially said there were 295 people on board; they did not initially count infants.

Among the passengers were 108 delegates enroute to the 20th International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2014) in Melbourne, including Joep Lange, a former president of the International AIDS Society, which organizes the conference. Also on board was Dutch senator Willem Witteveen.

Crash

Route of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17

Amsterdam Airport Schiphol

Crash site

Kuala Lumpur International Airport

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Location of crash site, departure and destination airports

The aircraft departed from Amsterdam Airport Schiphol Gate G03 at 12:14 CEST (10:14 UTC). It was due to arrive at Kuala Lumpur International Airport 11 hours and 45 minutes later at 06:00, 18 July MYT (22:00, 17 July UTC).

According to Malaysia Airlines, MH17 filed a flight plan requesting to fly at 35,000 feet throughout Ukrainian airspace, but "upon entering Ukrainian airspace, MH17 was instructed by Ukrainian air traffic control to fly at 33,000 feet".

Malaysia Airlines released a statement saying "it received notification from Ukrainian ATC that it had lost contact with flight MH17 at 1415 (GMT) at 30 km (19 mi) from [the] TAMAK waypoint (47°51′24″N 39°13′6″E ), approximately 50 km (31 mi) from the Russia–Ukraine border."

The plane crashed near the village of Hrabove just north of Torez, a city in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast, as it was approaching the Russian border.

Flightradar24 reported that a Singapore Airlines Boeing 777-200ER (Flight SQ351) and an Air India Boeing 787-8 (Flight AI113) were each about 25 km (16 mi) away from the Malaysian airliner when it disappeared.

Photographs from the site of the crash show scattered pieces of broken fuselage and engine parts, as well as bodies and passports. Some of the wreckage fell close to houses in Hrabove.

In the evening on 17 July, the lifenews.ru portal released the following statement "On July 17 near the village of Rassypnoye over the Torez city in Donetsk region an An-26 transport plane of Ukrainian Air Force was taken down, said the militia. According to them, the plane crashed somewhere near the "Progress" mine, away from residential areas. According to one of the militias, at approximately 17:30 local time an An-26 flew over the city. It was hit by a rocket, there was an explosion and the plane went to the ground, leaving a black smoke. Debris fell from the sky". ITAR-TASS and RIA Novosti had also reported that an An-26 had been shot down by the militia near Torez at around 16:00 local time.

Closure of airspace

As a result of the incident, Ukraine closed all routes in the Eastern Ukraine airspace, at all altitudes. The airspace above Donetsk Oblast had been previously closed by Ukraine on 1 July 2014 below 26,000 feet (7,900 m), and on 14 July 2014 below 32,000 feet (9,800 m). Eurocontrol issued a statement in which it explained that at the time of the crash the MH17 was at Flight Level 330 (33,000 feet), so the aircraft was above restricted airspace. A few airlines, such as Qantas, Korean Air Lines and British Airways, had already been avoiding the area for a number of months because of security concerns.

Timeline of flight

Elapsed (HH:MM)	Time				Event
	UTC	CEST (Amsterdam)	EEST (Ukraine)	MYT (Kuala Lumpur)
00:00	10:14	12:14	13:14	18:14	Flight 17 departs from Amsterdam Schiphol Airport
03:01	13:15	15:15	16:15	21:15	Aircraft disappears from Ukrainian radar

Investigation

After a video conference with representatives of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the Ukrainian national government, and Russia, the Novorossiya rebels, who control the area where the plane crashed, agreed to cordon off the crash scene, "provide safe access and security guarantees" to a "national investigation commission" by cooperating with the relevant Ukrainian authorities, and guarantee the safety of OSCE monitors by allowing them to freely investigate the crash scene.

Off-duty coal miners, along with local police and rescue crews, were assisting in the immediate response to the crash, by combing through debris and searching for survivors.

A senior U.S. administration official said to ABC News that FBI and NTSB officials are poised to head to Ukraine in an "advisory role" in the investigation.

Hypotheses on cause

Buk missile launcher

External audio
Recording released by Security Service of Ukraine Intercepted phone call, not independently verified, said to be between rebels discussing which rebel militant group shot down the aircraft and initial reports it was a civilian aircraft. Audio (in Russian) released by Security Service of Ukraine with English subtitles.

Multiple sources cited a post on the VKontakte social networking service that was allegedly made by Igor Girkin, commander of the pro-Russian Donbass People's Militia, in which he acknowledged shooting down an aircraft at approximately the same time that the flight was reported to have crashed in eastern Ukraine in the same area near the Russian border. The post specifically referenced how warnings were issued for planes not to fly in their airspace and the downing of an An-26 which the Ukraine Crisis Media Center suggested was a case of misidentification with MH17. The post was deleted later in the day and the account behind it claimed that Igor Girkin had no official account on that social network.

The incident was preceded by the loss of a Ukrainian military Su-25 close air support aircraft the previous day and a Ukrainian military An-26 transport aircraft three days earlier. Ukrainian government officials accused the Russian military of downing the aircraft, but a spokesman for Russia's Defence Ministry rejected those accusations as absurd.

Ukrainian interior ministry official Anton Gerashchenko stated that the airliner was "shot down with a surface-to-air missile by terrorists", referring to militants seeking to unite eastern Ukraine with Russia. Later the Ukrainian President stated that Ukrainian authorities "don't exclude" the possibility that the plane was shot down. This was denied by the rebels, stating that they have no weapons capable of shooting down planes at the height the Malaysian airliner was flying.

A defence expert later reported that to shoot down an aircraft at such a high altitude would have required a long-range surface-to-air missile, possibly assisted by radar, or an air-to-air missile from another aircraft. After the MH17 crash, the DNR claimed on numerous occasions that they "do not have access to weapons able to reach airplane at 10 km". However, just before the MH17 crash, DNR reported having access to a Buk missile system that can fire missiles up to 22,000 metres (72,000 ft), and uses radar guidance for targeting. On 17 July, an unnamed Associated Press journalist had seen a Buk launcher in Snizhne, a town in the Donetsk Oblast, roughly 10 miles southeast of the crash site. The reporter also saw seven rebel tanks at a filling station near the town. On 18 July, a Ukrainian newspaper alleged that a column of three tanks, 2 BTR vehicles and Buk transported on a lorry was photographed near Dmitrovka village. On 29 June, NTV reported that separatists had access to a Buk after taking control of a Ukrainian air defence base A-1402. On the same day, the Donetsk People's Republic claimed possession of such a system in a since-deleted tweet. On 13 July Sergey Kurginyan declared that Buk launchers taken over from Ukrainian army were going to be fixed soon by specialists from Russia. Shorter-range vehicle-mounted 9K35 Strela-10 missiles were also filmed by Russian Lifenews team near Donetsk on 10 July. On the other hand, Ukraine's foreign minister, Pavlo Klimkin, stated that the Ukraine did not have sophisticated surface-to-air missile systems in the area, and that none had been seized by separatist groups in recent weeks.

Jane's Defense Weekly stated in its analysis that a Buk missile launcher vehicle without well trained crew or without its support vehicles (command vehicle and acquisition radar vehicle) would have been unable to tell a civilian Boeing 777 from a military AN-26 airplane. In fact, Brig. Gen. Kevin Ryan, director of the Defense and Intelligence Project at Harvard University said that without extensive training crews would be unable to hit anything at all.

According to The Wall Street Journal, US agencies are divided over whether the plane was downed by the Russian military or by pro-Russia separatists, who may lack the expertise required. Still they insist that, "All roads lead to the Russians to some degree".

A source from Russia's Agency Rosaviatsia said the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine had closed its airspace over eastern Ukraine because of what it called "anti-terrorist operation[s]." Shortly after the crash the International Air Transport Association wrote in a statement: "Based on the information currently available it is believed that the airspace that the aircraft was traversing was not subject to restrictions."

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) published alleged wiretaps of separatist commanders reporting that a civilian airliner had been shot down. Flight 17 was allegedly shot down by a group of pro-Russian Cossacks manning a checkpoint near the village of Chornukhine, Luhansk Oblast, some 80 km (50 mi) north-west of Donetsk, according to recordings of intercepted phone calls between Russian military intelligence officers and members of rebel groups.

On 18 July, Russian Defence Ministry declared that at the time of the crash "anti-aircraft units of Russian Federation did not operate in that area". Russia claimed that Ukrainian Buk-M1 units were located north-west from Donetsk and that Russian units detected their radar activity. The Ministry also stated that the Ukrainian Buk battery was deployed at a site from which it could have fired a missile at the airliner. DPR representatives made a number of statements, some reporting seeing that a military An-26 transport aircraft was hit, others stating they had no missiles that could reach 10 km altitude and hit an airliner , while LPR representatives claimed that they had witnessed an Ukrainian aircraft, identified as a Su-25, shoot down the Boeing. Gazeta.ru pointed out that both sides of the conflict, Ukraine and DPR, have Buk missiles capable of reaching 10 km altitude, but that the service ceiling at 5 km of Su-25 fighters make it impossible for it to shoot down a high altitude airliner. There has also been speculation that the intended target might have been president Putin's plane, which at that time was flying over eastern Europe on the way back from South America.

Reactions

Countries involved

• Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko vowed support for a Dutch probe into the crash, which he called an act of terrorism. He reportedly offered condolences for the air disaster in a telephone conversation with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin said responsibility for the crash rests with "the country in whose airspace the plane was in when it crashed", and that "the disaster wouldn't happen if the military action in south-east of Ukraine was not reenabled".

• Malaysian Deputy Foreign Minister Hamzah Zainuddin said that the foreign ministry would be working closely with the Russian and Ukrainian governments with regard to the incident. Prime Minister Najib Razak later said on his statement that "At this stage, however, Malaysia is unable to verify the cause of this tragedy. But we must, and we will, find out precisely what happened to this flight. No stone will be left unturned". He also added "If it transpires that the plane was indeed shot down, we insist that the perpetrators must swiftly be brought to justice".

• Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and King Willem-Alexander voiced their shock at the crash. Minister of foreign affairs Frans Timmermans will join the Dutch investigation team send to Ukraine. Dutch government buildings fly the flag at half-mast on 18 July.

International

• Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said that if the incident was proven to be a shoot-down, it would be a crime and the perpetrators would be brought to justice. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs said the incident was a huge tragedy and that any Australians who were concerned about family members' wellbeing should try to contact them directly. It also said it was awaiting confirmation on the number of Australian passengers on board.

• Belgian Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo said "On behalf of the Belgian government, he expressed his sincere condolences to the families and friends of the many victims of the flight of Malaysia Airlines. His thoughts are paying particular to the five Belgian victims, their families and friends as stood on his statement issued in Friday. Di Rupo wants "full clarity comes over the exact circumstances of this tragedy and those who are responsible should be quickly identified and brought to justice".

• Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said that "Canada stands ready to provide whatever support it can to assist authorities in determining the cause of the crash."

• German Chancellor Angela Merkel demanded a swift, independent inquiry.

• Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono stated that the aircraft downing is "a violation against international law and the law of war". He asked that whoever shot down the aircraft be punished unequivocally, and offered to help with the investigation.

• New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully stated that the New Zealand government's thoughts are with the families and friends of those involved.

• Philippines Deputy Presidential Spokesperson Abigail Valte said in a statement "Malacañang offer our sincerest condolences to the families of all the victims, recognising full well the enormity of their loss. At this difficult time, we stand with them in solidarity as one people and one country".

• South African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Maite Nkoana–Mashabane urged world leaders not to jump to conclusions on the incident and said the government was investigating two passengers with links to South Africa.

• British Prime Minister David Cameron described the crash as "an absolutely appalling, shocking, horrific incident", and stated that "if, as seems possible, this was brought down then those responsible must be brought to account and we must lose no time in doing that". The United Kingdom has requested an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council.

• U.S. President Barack Obama said, "The U.S. will offer any assistance we can to determine what happened and why. As a country our thoughts and prayers are with all the families of the passengers, wherever they call home." Vice President Joe Biden said the plane appeared to have been deliberately "blown out of the sky", and vowed US assistance for the investigation into the crash. United States Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power stated that the flight "was likely downed by a surface-to-air missile, an SA-11, operated from a separatist-held location in eastern Ukraine,” that the U.S. could not “rule out technical assistance by Russian personnel” in operating the system, and that “Russia must end this war.”

Supranational

• The UN Security Council was scheduled to hold an emergency meeting on the Ukraine crisis. A British-drafted statement calling for "a full, thorough and independent international investigation" into what caused the crash and stressing the need for "all parties to grant immediate access by investigators to the crash site to determine the cause of the incident" will be discussed.

See also

For a more extensive list of similar incidents, see List of airliner shootdown incidents

• Ukrainian Air Force Ilyushin Il-76 shoot-down, another airplane that crashed 116 kilometers from MH17's crash site
• Siberia Airlines Flight 1812, also shot down over Ukraine

External links

• Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 – Official updates regarding Malaysia Airlines Flight 17
• Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crashes in Ukraine – live updates
• MH17 17 July 2014 on FlightAware
• Images:
  • Images and videos from New York Daily News
  • Images from Russia Today