Airlines Now Avoiding Flying Over Eastern Ukraine

[psycopk]

Reuters Site of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane crash in the Donetsk region of Ukraine.

 

In April, the FAA warned all U.S. air carriers against flying over the Crimea region, the southern peninsula annexed by Russia earlier this year. But that warning did not include the Donetsk region in the eastern part of Ukraine, where Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 crashed Thursday. The FAA has not yet issued any new warnings in the immediate aftermath of reports that the airliner had been shot down, and the International Air Transport Association said that the airspace from which the plane apparently went down “was not subject to restrictions.”

After news of the crash, data from the real-time European flight-tracking service Flightradar24 showed many more civilian aircraft were still flying over the crash area:

Then later Thursday, Flightradar24 showed the region clear of commercial aircraft as more airlines started announcing they would stop flying over eastern Ukraine:

Here are the carriers that have made announcements Thursday regarding the airspace over Ukraine following the crash of Flight MH17:

•  Air France  FR:AF -1.45% said it has decided to avoid the airspace of eastern Ukraine.
• German airline Lufthansa  XE:LHA -2.37% said it will avoid sending its planes through airspace in Ukraine’s east.
• Russian airliner Transaero said it will avoid Ukrainian airspace for all future flights
• Turkish Airlines said its flights will avoid Ukrainian airspace after the crash.
• Russian airline Aeroflot said it will no longer fly over Ukraine territory.
• British Airways said its flights are not using Ukrainian airspace with the exception of once-a-day service between Heathrow and Kiev.