Europe’s pilots are shocked and deeply saddened by the shooting down of Ukrainian Airlines flight PS752 in Iran and the killing of all on board. This comes only a few years after the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17), in 2014. It is tragic proof that some lessons from MH17 on flying into or over conflict zones have not been learnt, and that Europe has no effective system in place to reduce those risks. Having seen major airlines continue flying to Tehran in the days after the shooting down – despite the security threat – European pilots call for urgent and pragmatic solutions.
“It is clear that we cannot rely on conflict-stressed states to restrict or close their own airspace. We must in principle rely on our national authorities and our airlines to make sure that the lives of passengers and crew are adequately protected and this unchecked risk is addressed,” says ECA Secretary General Philip von Schöppenthau. ”However, purely national, uncoordinated action has not done the job in the past and won’t do it in the future,” he continues. “Individual Member States clearly do not share their security intelligence about conflict zones sufficiently to provide protection. As long as this is the case, and nothing substantive occurs through a dedicated European structure, we will see further flights taking unnecessary risks.”
