Emirates
will stop flying over Iraq due to concerns over missile attacks
following the MH17 air disaster in Ukraine, said the airline's president
Tim Clark.
LONDON: Emirates will
stop flying over Iraq due to concerns over missile attacks following the
MH17 air disaster in Ukraine, the airline's president Tim Clark told
The Times on Monday (July 28).
Almost 300 people aboard
Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 died when it came down in eastern Ukraine
nearly two weeks ago, with Washington and Europe claiming it was shot
down by a Russian-made surface-to-air missile fired by pro-Moscow
militants.
"This is a political
animal but... the fact of the matter is MH17 changed everything, and
that was very nearly in European airspace," Clark told The Times in an
interview published on Monday. "We cannot continue to say, 'Well it's a
political thing'. We have to do something. We have to take the bull by
the horns."
Clark predicted other
carriers would also decide to stop flying over Iraq, as the global
airline industry reviews the risk of overflying combat zones.
Malaysia Airlines flight
MH17, a Boeing 777 aircraft, was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur
with 298 people aboard on July 17 when it was downed close to the
village of Grabove, in the rebellion-wracked region of Donetsk in east
Ukraine.
"The horrors that this
created was a kick in the solar plexus for all of us," Clark told the
daily paper. "Nevertheless having got through it we must take stock and
deal with it."
On Sunday meanwhile, the
commercial director of Malaysia Airlines called for a complete overhaul
of the way flight paths are deemed safe following the plane's downing by
a suspected missile. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Hugh Dunleavy
said the disaster would have "an unprecedented impact on the aviation
industry", claiming that airlines can no longer depend on aviation
authorities for reliable information about flying over conflict zones.
"For too long, airlines
have been shouldering the responsibility for making decisions about what
constitutes a safe flight path, over areas in political turmoil around
the world," he wrote. "We are not intelligence agencies, but airlines,
charged with carrying passengers in comfort between destinations."
- Source: http://www.channelnewsasia.com
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