Uffda
There's actually a few of those on that wikipedia list (for as accurate as wikipedia is). WHY wouldn't a commercial airline know what airspaces to stay the heck out of as well? And then yes, shooting down the plane seems like a drastic option, but then again, we know people have flown commercial planes into buildings, so...
A 777's cruising altitude is very high. If it did get shot down, it would take an incredible guidance system on the weapon.
- Andrew
Hip Redux
I know nothing about this sort of stuff. You could be right, I'm just going by what's on the news currently.
Labrat
The Flip side of it is that commercial airlines were actually used for spying in the Cold War (by both sides).
There are several (niche) history books covering this
5K 20:23 (Vdot 48.7) 9/9/17
10K 44:06 (Vdot 46.3) 3/11/17
HM 1:33:48 (Vdot 48.6) 11/11/17
FM 4:13:43 (Vdot 35.4) 3/4/18
33 000 feet.
It does require something military air defence, probably semi-permanantly installed.
My suspicion is they thought is was Ukrainian Air Force and were going to repeat yesterday's shoot down.
So sad and sick.
Just saw that the US is confirming it was a surface to air missile.
Yeah apparently planes have been getting shot down there all week by one side or the other.
I wonder if the international community will step in this area and lock it down? This goes beyond collateral damage, and whatever this skirmish is needs to be stopped.