Malaysia Airlines has defended its decision to divert a London-to-Kuala Lumpur flight over Syrian airspace when its usual route over Ukraine was closed in the wake of the Flight MH17 crash on Thursday last week.
The flag carrier said in a statement late on Monday that Flight MH4’s path was in accordance with routes approved by the UN’s aviation agency, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
“As per the notice to airmen issued by the Syrian Civil Aviation Authority, the Syrian airspace was not subject to restrictions. At all times, MH004 was in airspace approved by ICAO,” the statement said.
Dozens of airlines previously flying over crisis-stricken eastern Ukraine abandoned the well-used route between Asia and Europe after Flight MH17 crashed with 298 people on board, apparently shot down by a surface-to-air missile.
Previous MH4 Airbus A380s have flown over Turkey, according to air traffic tracker Flightradar24.
However, it posted on Twitter on Monday that Flight MH4 flew over war-torn Syria, where the conflict is raging both on the ground and in the air.
“As far as we have seen #MH4 was the only transcontinental flight going over Syria,” it wrote on its @flightradar24 Twitter account.
MH17 crashed over eastern Ukraine — where the military has been fighting pro-Russia separatists — on Thursday last week, on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, with 283 passengers and 15 crew members aboard.
Both the rebels and Moscow deny claims by the US and Ukraine that MH17 was shot down by the insurgents using a missile system supplied by Russia.
It is the second ill-fated Malaysia Airlines plane this year, after Flight MH370 disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, carrying 239 people.
The jet is believed to have veered off course and crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, but no trace of any wreckage has been found.
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
RSS