Yeahhhhhh…I just did the same thing for a couple of us/asia trips I have had my eye on. They wanted 5k for a trip that cost about 2.5k to book on Orbitz. Something tells me they aren’t hurting that bad, unless their website is just completely cut off from any real time pricing.
Buying tickets on Malaysia is a gamble. Not that you’ll be killed but that the airline will fail after you return from your trip.
The route that pilot chose to fly over Ukraine and Russia (Ukrainian segment L-980, Russian segment A-87) was CLOSED by Russian authorities:
http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/read.main/6129612/
this NOTAM (notice to airmen) was published at 00z on 17JUL14 (aka this morning, 10 hours before departure of MH17).
URRV V6158/14 17JUL0000-31AUG2359 EST DUE TO COMBAT ACTIONS ON THE TERRITORY OF THE UKRAINE NEAR THE STATE BORDER WITH THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION AND THE FACTS OF FRNG FM THE TERRITORY OF THE UKRAINE TOWARDS THE TERRITORY OF RUSSIAN FEDERATION, TO ENSURE INTL FLT SAFETY, ATS RTE SEGMENTS CLSD AS FLW: A100 MIMRA - ROSTOV-NA-DONU VOR/DME (RND), B145 KANON - ASMIL, G247 MIMRA - BAGAYEVSKIY NDB (BA), A87 TAMAK - SARNA
Just to let you know.
“You must be an engineer” says the balloonist.
“I am” replies the man. “How did you know?”
“Well” says the balloonist, “everything you have told me is technically correct, but your information is useless, and the fact is I am still lost.”
It’s really close enough for this purpose.
Closure applied only below 32K feet apparently.
Though if we’re just trying to scare people to get cheap flights, potentially causing hundreds of people lose their livelihoods… no, I can’t do it.
- As Nox notes, the closure didn’t actually apply to the altitude in question.
- 10 hours is pretty short notice for a flight scheduled months or years in advance. Do we even know if the airline or the authorities at the airport it departed from received this declaration? Were the air traffic controllers who presumably cleared MH17’s flight path aware of it?
- I question Russia’s legal right to declare routes in Ukrainian airspace closed. Sure, it was a route that crossed their border, but they weren’t saying there was a problem in their own airspace. Russia has no obvious regulatory function here: not a Russian airline, and they were making rulings about Ukrainian airspace.
- On the other hand, by giving half-trained lunatics highly advanced weaponry Russia definitely had the practical ability to declare Ukrainian airspace closed. And they can clearly back up their pet murderers with legalistic-sounding declarations that use the passive voice to declare there’s a problem, without noting who created that problem - much like the mafioso who comes round and issues threats to extort protection money, all the time merely expressing regret that it’s such a dangerous society and saying it would be a shame if something bad happened.
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Or they just refuse to accept the market value of their product. See also: authors who want their novels to be priced at $14 for an e-book…
Anyone care to estimate the incremental fuel cost of adding an extra passenger to an almost empty 777 going from Seattle to Malaysia? Anything more than that for a ticket and they would at least be reducing their losses a bit.
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