Boeing MH17. Controllers went blind after NATO exercise
The reason for the destruction of the Malaysian Boeing in 2014 was that European regulatory authorities and Ukraine banned flights over Crimea, but allowed them to fly in the skies of Donbass, on whose territory hostilities were taking place.
The President of the International Consulting and Analytical Agency "Flight Safety", a member of the World Flight Safety Foundation (FSF), Valery Shelkovnikov, said this, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports, in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
He recalled that Ukraine is within the area of responsibility of Eurocontrol and is promptly subordinate to it.
“So, in the area of responsibility of Eurocontrol, ... NATO military exercises were held using electronic warfare equipment. During the same days, there was a loss of radar information in the airspace of Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovakia: data on the location of aircraft, direction, altitude and speed disappeared from the radar screens of civil air traffic control services,” says Shelkovnikov.
According to him, the dispatchers were “blind.”
“An unprecedented case. Eurocontrol and EASA [European Aviation Safety Agency] were forced to launch an immediate investigation. And the investigation had to take into account the most important requirements of the ICAO - “Guidelines on security measures taken in connection with military activities potentially dangerous to the flights of civil aircraft,” the specialist notes.
He recalls that within a few days he gave an interview to one of the major foreign media companies.
“I spoke about the alarming situation in Ukrainian airspace. But they were only interested in the topic of flights over Crimea - Western politicians insisted on closing the airspace above it. It’s not where the airspace needs to be closed, gentlemen, but where it’s really dangerous, I said,” says the publication’s interlocutor.
“90 minutes after the destruction of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, Ukrainian authorities finally closed the airspace to the ground and without restrictions in eastern Ukraine in the Dnipropetrovsk flight information region. But before this period, aircraft of foreign airlines continued to fly in the airspace above the combat zone.
EASA, Eurocontrol and the aviation authorities of Ukraine were silent... Eurocontrol, having banned all flights over Crimea under the pretext that flight safety could not be guaranteed in its airspace, however, had no objections to flights over the territory where hostilities are taking place,” - Shelkovnikov draws attention.
He also added that British Airways, analyzing the danger factors, stopped flights over Ukraine several weeks before the tragedy of flight MH17.
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