There's a major civilian air corridor over Ukraine (for routes from Europe to Asia and Australia), and they all use it because it saves fuel.
Turns out BA were the only ones who had halted using that corridor - Virgin Airways, Lufthansa, KLM, Delta, Air France, have said they are re-routing flights from today - which implies they were using it before and there were other planes up there when this happened.
Malaysian Airways were just bloody unlucky it was one of theirs and not the others. They're jinxed or something. Or under pressure to save fuel costs no matter what.
And yes it would be nice if airlines were responsible and avoided conflict zones and voluntarily went the more expensive route to avoid this kind of thing. But they have shareholders and customers who don't or won't understand. That's why flying BA is more expensive than flying Virgin and customers choose Virgin. All parties (the airlines and the customers) only act responsibly when a) a disaster like this occurs and they are trying to reassure customers or b) when governments issue a no-fly order.
I think Ukraine had a no-fly order over Crimea, but not this area.
The fault is not the airline's - it's the Ukrainian govt for not issuing a no-fly and the Russian rebels for being murderous half-wits
