[Tony Wheeler]

Certainly it was a case of misidentification Marc, however the weapon system deployed is considered by experts to be far too sophisticated for unqualified rebels to operate. It's largely on that basis, plus its immediate removal to Russia, that accusations are being levelled at the Russian military, for having either fired the missile themselves or trained the rebels who did. Of course, if we cast our minds back to the Iranian airliner shot down by the US Navy, after misidentifying an A300 Airbus as an attacking F-14 Tomcat, it's pretty clear that even the best trained military using state of the art equipment are not immune to such errors.

Personally I blame the airline industry in this case, because it's to them we entrust our lives, not the countries over which they fly us. Everyone knows this route should have been closed months ago, rather than just issue warnings, and airlines like MAS who ignored those warnings are to be despised IMO. They put profit ahead of safety to fly the shortest route and rolled the dice with passenger's lives. Perhaps I'm naive, but I find it astounding they'd fly over an active war zone with a declared no-fly zone up to 32000 feet and consider themselves safe. In any case the proof is in the pudding, and MH17 was the third aircraft shot down in the region that week.