The Malaysia 17 story has been told. But beneath the knotted narratives of the accepted version of events, well woven in the three years since the Boeing was brought into an afternoon cornfield in Ukraine, lies a simpler, darker truth. //
As industry experts, we’ve comforted ourselves knowing that “Nobody considered that civil aircraft, at cruising altitude, were at risk” (Dutch Safety Board report). When fingers were pointed at Malaysia Airlines for overflying a war zone, we were quick to tell the public “Not fair. Everybody else did as well”. We were all apparently operating under the same misguided reassurance that this was a war going on underneath the airways, and that cruising at 33,000 over the top of it would be just fine. As an airline pilot at the time, I did the same as everyone else using the eastern Ukraine routes, and monitored the conflict beneath us with interest on each flight, but without concern.
But what if we could have known — what if the risk information was actually there, but for some reason we weren’t seeing it?
Well, it was. //
On a routine post-Soviet eastern block overflight, I will see tens, maybe hundred of Tempo Restricted Areas in my 20, 30, maybe 50 page NOTAM Briefing. Russia is very fond of them, as are many Eastern European countries. I don’t plot the coordinates of them, and I trust that Air Traffic Control will keep me out of anywhere I shouldn’t be.
I would discard it with a glance and move to the next one.
But wait.
_
This notice was on board MH17. This was the warning from the Ukraine Authorities that something was going on that the MH17 crew should know about. It was published on the Monday, three days before MH17 was shot down, and it was published only because on that Monday at 9am, an aircraft at FL210 (21,000 feet) had been shot down.
To the pilot, to the dispatcher, and to the crew of MH17 it’s indecipherable. It looks the same as every other routine TRA.
What if, instead, the Authorities had simply written what they meant? //
The core problem of the Notam system is not language. The core problem is that we rely on a single source for critical flight information and analysis. The State.
So, can the state be relied upon to provide that information? Can the state be trusted? In the case of Malaysian 17, it seems not. The vague language may or may not have been deliberate, but there was nobody else to provide the check and balance.
In many cases, states flagrantly disregard the basic principle of the Notam system. A Notam is clearly defined as “information concerning the establishment, condition or change in any aeronautical facility, service, procedure or hazard, the timely knowledge of which is essential”.
Almost all states are guilty of ignoring the word essential. The vast majority of Notams now in the system are anything but. Many are completely unreadable by humans. Some of the garbage in the system has to be seen to be believed. //
Worse still, states routinely omit information, or hijack the system. Greece and Turkey use the Notam system to score political points, endlessly discussing boundary disputes. Deeply troubled states like Libya, Syria, Iraq, Somalia and Yemen cannot be trusted to provide essential information. For others, like Egypt, protecting tourism is consistently higher priority than publishing safety of flight information.
