Malaysian Airlines Flight May Have Been in Airspace U.S. Restricts

A picture taken on July 17, 2014 shows a Malaysia Airlines
closed counter at the Schiphol airport near Amsterdam after a Malaysian
airliner crashed in rebel-held eastern Ukraine.

In the wake of the reported downing of the Malaysian airline over
Ukraine, major airlines are avoiding the airspace over Ukraine.


As the leading European flight tracking service Flightradar24
reported, many airlines have announced that they will stop flying over
the area.



Among the airlines avoiding the area is the Russian airline Aeroflot.



British Airways sent this statement to Mashable:

The safety and security of our customers is always our top priority.


Our flights are not using Ukrainian airspace, with the exception of our once a day service between Heathrow and Kiev.


We are keeping those services under review, but Kiev is several hundred kilometres from the incident site.

The Federal Aviation Administration, which has authority over
U.S.-based carriers, currently restricts all U.S. airlines from flying
over part of the contested airspace in Ukraine, except in an emergency.
This policy went into effect on April 27, 2014, and will expire in April
2015, although it may be extended, depending on the security situation.



The area prohibited from overflights is known as the "Simferopol
Flight Information Region," which is near the contested city of
Simferopol in Crimea, which Russia annexed in March. The area generally
surrounds the Crimean Peninsula, rather than the entire Ukrainian border
with Russia, where the missing Malaysian flight was last reported to be
located on July 17, 2014.


The FAA order applies to U.S. airlines, so it does not mandate that
Malaysia Airlines could not fly over that region. The order has a safety
exception, which states:

In an emergency that requires immediate decision and
action for the safety of the flight, the pilot-in-command of an aircraft
may deviate from this [order] to the extent required by that emergency.

In addition, the FAA order requires U.S. air carriers operating
"into, out of, within, or transiting" from certain flight information
regions, which is an area of airspace, to "exercise extreme caution."
Specifically, the order states (ALL-CAPS from original text):

U.S. OPERATORS AND AIRMEN FLYING INTO, OUT OF, WITHIN, OR
TRANSITING LVOV (UKLV), KYIV(UKBV), DNEPROPETROVSK (UKDV), AND ODESSA
(UKOV) FIRS, AS WELL AS AIRSPACE IN THE SIMFEROPOL (UKFV) FIR THAT IS
OUTSIDE THE LATERAL LIMITS OF SFAR 113 AIRSPACE DESCRIBED ABOVE, MUST
REVIEW CURRENT SECURITY/THREAT INFORMATION AND NOTAMS; COMPLY
WITH
ALL APPLICABLE FAA REGULATIONS, OPERATIONS SPECIFICATIONS, MANAGEMENT
SPECIFICATIONS, AND LETTERS OF AUTHORIZATION, INCLUDING UPDATING B450;
AND EXERCISE EXTREME CAUTION DUE TO THE CONTINUING POTENTIAL FOR
INSTABILITY.

What this means in plain English is that U.S. air carriers were told
back in April that in areas around the prohibited flight region above
Crimea, additional restrictions may apply based on the changing security
environment.


The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) also issued an advisory in April
that warned pilots that conflicting air traffic control agencies in
Russia and Ukraine may seek to control the same airspace over
Simferopol, and therefore to be aware of the "possible existence of
serious risks to the safety of international civil flights."


There are other organizations, including the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) that handles international airspace issues.


It was the ICAO and the European air traffic control organization known as Eurocontrol
that responded to the eruption of the volcano in Iceland in 2010, which
caused widespread airspace closures due to volcanic ash. These
organizations, along with the FAA, also handled airspace closures during
the conflict in Bosnia and Kosovo in the late 1990s.