Jet Airways and Air India statements that they have been avoiding air space over Ukraine ever since the crisis began is the hottest talking point among aviation experts.
On Friday, a day after the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down by a missile over Ukraine, both Airways stated: "Jet Airways would like to assure its guests that none of the Jet Airways flights to and from Europe fly through the Ukrainian airspace ever since the conflict began and we continue to avoid the Ukrainian airspace in the prime interest of the safety of our guests".
A civil aviation ministry statement said almost the same thing about Air India. "There was no Air India flight near the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines plane at the time of the incident," it said/
Travel enthusiasts rubbish the claims, saying data from flight tracking websites clearly show a Jet Airways flight along the same route, just two hours before MH17 was shot down.
Devesh Agarwal, an aviation enthusiast who scanned satellite-based flight tracking websites like FlightAware, PlaneFinder, and FlightRadar24, found Jet Airway's statement to be false .
"Radar-tracking data shows that Jet Airways flight 9W119, which departed from London at 8:39am on July 17 for Mumbai, flew almost the same air corridor north-east of Donetsk over the village of Shakhtars'k, the crash site of MH17, just about two hours before the ill-fated airliner was blown out of the sky," he said in his blog bangaloreaviation.com.
The flight-tracking websites are based on a system, under which on-board electronic equipment sends data about an aircraft's position via the Global Positioning System (GPS).
21/07/14 Shahkar Abidi/Daily News & Analysis
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On Friday, a day after the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down by a missile over Ukraine, both Airways stated: "Jet Airways would like to assure its guests that none of the Jet Airways flights to and from Europe fly through the Ukrainian airspace ever since the conflict began and we continue to avoid the Ukrainian airspace in the prime interest of the safety of our guests".
A civil aviation ministry statement said almost the same thing about Air India. "There was no Air India flight near the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines plane at the time of the incident," it said/
Travel enthusiasts rubbish the claims, saying data from flight tracking websites clearly show a Jet Airways flight along the same route, just two hours before MH17 was shot down.
Devesh Agarwal, an aviation enthusiast who scanned satellite-based flight tracking websites like FlightAware, PlaneFinder, and FlightRadar24, found Jet Airway's statement to be false .
"Radar-tracking data shows that Jet Airways flight 9W119, which departed from London at 8:39am on July 17 for Mumbai, flew almost the same air corridor north-east of Donetsk over the village of Shakhtars'k, the crash site of MH17, just about two hours before the ill-fated airliner was blown out of the sky," he said in his blog bangaloreaviation.com.
The flight-tracking websites are based on a system, under which on-board electronic equipment sends data about an aircraft's position via the Global Positioning System (GPS).
21/07/14 Shahkar Abidi/Daily News & Analysis
