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The fog of war. We took down an Iranian commercial plane once. Although isn't this the 3rd time for Russia? Once around the Koreas or Japan and then another time it was a Dutch plane and now this.
Not in any way to support Russia but only to observe that all of the Russian attacks involved foreign (to Russia) aircraft which were physically located near, within, or over either Russian airspace or a Russian-involved military action.
Given the geographical differences, the probabilities of such airspace incursions or military defense errors are much greater in Europe or Asia than in North America. The "Dutch" place was actually a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur which was flying over the Russia-Ukraine war zone in 2014. The other memorable disaster was the Korean Airlines 747 which was well off-course due to a navigation error and was taken down near Sakhalin Island in 1983.
The United States took down Iran Air Flight 655 between Bandar Abbas and Dubai over the Persian Gulf in 1988.
@Old_Joe: in 1987 North Korean operatives planted a bomb in an overhead luggage compartment of KAL 828, a Baghdad to Seoul flight. On board was a Korean diplomat, a possible target. Everyone on board was lost. The sister of the diplomat, a nun and college president I knew in Seoul, told me that she and her brother walked all the way from Seoul to Pusan in 1950 to escape the invading northerners. True grit.
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Given the geographical differences, the probabilities of such airspace incursions or military defense errors are much greater in Europe or Asia than in North America. The "Dutch" place was actually a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur which was flying over the Russia-Ukraine war zone in 2014. The other memorable disaster was the Korean Airlines 747 which was well off-course due to a navigation error and was taken down near Sakhalin Island in 1983.
The United States took down Iran Air Flight 655 between Bandar Abbas and Dubai over the Persian Gulf in 1988.