Kim67

Oh no, hope it still goes ahead and that their work continues, such a shame.

Scouse Express

Plane was flying onto Perth, after stopping off in Kuala Lumpur, according to press reports.


Jim.

Kim67

Yes, apparently Perth bound with a connecting flight to Melbourne. The number on board was revised up by three because the plane was carrying three infants, the number of Australians on board went from 24 to 27 too which may be a coincidence or there may be a few families returning from school holidays.

Kim67

A couple from Melbourne are the first Australians to be named:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/busi...-1226992935095

"9 minutes ago
Melbourne couple Albert and Marie Rizk are understood to be two of the 27 Australians killed when flight MH17 was shot down. The Australian understands the Rizks were returning from a European holiday.
Jack Ogilvie, a friend of the couple, told 3AW radio the Sunbury community is in shock at losing "just terrific people".
The couple has two children and have lived in the western suburb for many years, and were heavily invpolved in the local community.
One of Mr Rizk’s colleagues confirmed the couple’s family had been contacted by officials to notify them of their deaths.
Workers at real estate agent Raine and Horne, where Mr Rizk was a director, said they believed they couple was on the flight. - PATRICIA KARVELAS"

bcworld

MH serves Perth with A330 aircraft, not 777...so this claim is likely made up.

Amazulu

It was connecting with a flight to Perth

I think that it would be going on to Melbourne if anywhere else

Scouse Express

Quite possible, but, here's what the Associated Press said;

AIDS conference attendees on downed Malaysian jet

Amazulu

I was just reading that Singapore and Air India flights were also very close by (25kms) when this happened and Emirates not long before

Planefinder is showing little air traffic over Ukraine now - it is all to the west

bcworld

You can pull up the routes taken by various airlines yesterday, day before etc and almost all of them that I checked went exactly the same way as MH. Basically anyone flying from LHR, AMS, FRA to SIN, BKK or KUL. That's Singapore Airlines, Lufthansa, Thai, Eva...they all followed the MH route.

E.g. SQ317 SQ317 - Singapore Airlines - Flight history - Flightradar24

The only one that was different was BA...they do seem to have purposefully detoured on the flights to SIN and BKK e.g. BA15 - British Airways - Flight history - Flightradar24

Kim67

Joep Lange (international AIDS research scientist) is reported to have been on the flight.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joep_Lange

Scouse Express

21 Commercial Flights were reasonably close, at the time of the attack, according to Flight Radar 24.

I flew from Blighty to Corfu, at the Height of the Yugoslavian War, in 1993 - Our plane, took a wide sweep over Italy to avoid the possibility of something like this going on.

Why the Hell were Commercial Flights not diverted around the conflict zone?????

Jim.

spuddyo

That's a question I have wondered about for a while. Last year I flew back to Manchester and the Emirates plane flew directly over Iraq which worried me greatly. Commercial flights should not be allowed anywhere near countries with a known history of conflict unless it's unavoidable.

Jon77

Possible suspect named - MH17 disaster: Is this the man who shot down the plane?

Strelkov - or "shooter" I have heard his name before in this 'war' in Ukraine. A VERY nasty piece of work who will think nothing of shooting his own men never mind the enemy.

Don't think it was deliberate, it was massive miscalculation as they thought they were hitting a Ukraine military cargo plane and they posted they had brought down one of these on social media. Then they realised it wasn't what they thought it was and quickly deleted it all.......... but not before someone captured the posts.

renth

Emirates and Qantas still flying over Iraq too. I was on a Qantas A380 in April that had mechanical issues and had to descend and slow down. We were over Baghdad at the time!

I'm in the UK right now too. I actually did a few web searches and looked at the FlightRadar before this trip because of the recent ISIS malarkey and we still flew over Iraq, I'm not particularly worried about being shot down but what if the plane needed to make an emergency landing?

One minute sipping gin and tonic, the next being beheaded on LiveLeak.

Still this was a hideous incident and I always think of the little kids that would have been on board. I just hope they went quick.

Beoz

Too true. The flight I took back to Oz in March (Qantas) was over northern Irag when I clocked it on the map. Followed it heading south just to the east of Baghdad, over the top of Kuwait City then onto Dubai. It was night and you could see all the bright lights of Baghdad. Even more bizarre were the massive flames firing up from all the oil fields.