Text 16823, 60 rader
Skriven 2014-07-20 21:58:26 av Kees van Eeten (2:280/5003.4)
  Kommentar till text 16807 av TIM RICHARDSON (1:123/140)
Ärende: Ukraine
===============
Hello TIM!

20 Jul 14 08:13, you wrote to me:

 TR> First...the pilot is chiefly responsible for what the aircraft does
 TR> once it leaves the ground.

 Yes but he can not veere of his flightplan, based on personal opinions.

 TR> Secondly...this incident calls to mind the incident where a civilian
 TR> aircraft deliberately took off and aimed its takeoff path directly
 TR> at an American war ship, such that the captain of that war ship shot
 TR> it down thinking it might be an enemy missile. The USS Vincennse saw
 TR> a large object approaching it at a high velocity in the Persian Gulf.

 TR> The captain treated the object as a hostile missile and his crew shot
 TR> it down. It was an Iranian aircraft, full of Iranian passengers, and
 TR> nobody misses them. Well....maybe other Iranians. Anyway, hopefully,
 TR> the captain was promoted to admiral later in his career for his act
 TR> of human decency (killing Iranians).

 As I read it the the system presented the aircraft as a hostile missile.
 There was a flaw in the system, and the crew reacted as it should have.
 The failure of the process was admitted.

 TR> In any case...any pilot who takes a civilian aircraft over a war zone
 TR> is taking a chance of being shot down. Even if it is supposedly known
 TR> before hand by the combatants that civilian aircraft are liable to
 TR> fly overhead in the battle zone, it is ultimately the responsibility
 TR> of the pilot of the aircraft for whatever happens. If it is the usual
 TR> policy of a civilian airline to route their aircraft over a combat
 TR> area, then they become liable for whatever happens, both financially
 TR> and morally.

 There are so many skirmishes in the world, that not flying  over them would
 make aviation impossible. Considering the equipment avalable in many of
 these regions, high altitude aviation is considered safe.

 TR> Dealing with combatants of either Eastern Europe, or the
 TR> Middle East, it is to be expected that one side or the other will do
 TR> something atrocious, like shoot down a civilian aircraft with hundreds
 TR> of innocents aboard, and care not a bit for the consequences. Dealing
 TR> with Russians, whether of the old Soviet Union kind, or the modern-day
 TR> version, the mental type is the same; they aren't known as `The Russian
 TR> Bear' for nothing! By the way...isn't Putin ex-KGB? That alone says a lot.

 Atrocities in warzones are nor a priviledge of Eastern-Europe or the
 middle-East.

 TR> And there is already precedent for this; it was Russian war planes
 TR> that
 TR> stalked and shot down a Korean airliner, back in the 1980's.

 That is almost 35 years ago. Navigation systems and warning systems cannot
 be compared with what is available today.

Kees

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