Flying Over A Conflict Zone

It’s more common than you’d think:

Since April, the Federal Aviation Administration had banned U.S. carriers from flying over Crimea and the Black Sea (due to potential miscommunication between Ukrainian and Russian air traffic officials and “related potential misidentification of civil aircraft”). But that no-fly zone did not include the mainland part of Ukraine where the Malaysian flight appeared to go down — and where the airline had flown regularly, once a day, in recent weeks.

The jet was on a major route:

Even more worrying is that the planned path that brought MH17 near the disputed region, known as airway L980, is one of the most popular and most congested air routes in the world. L980 is a key link between major international hubs in Europe, such as London Heathrow, Amsterdam Schiphol, and Frankfurt, and Asian megacities, like Singapore, Mumbai, and Hong Kong. The airspace over Ukraine is traveled by virtually every commercial flight from Western Europe to south Asia.

But they are avoiding that airspace now: