Distress of MH17 tragedy
I FELT compelled to write to you as I read the July 20 edition of Sunday Star-Times today and was shocked and dismayed to see and read the article ‘‘80 seconds of pure terror in crash’’.
I felt that this article was extremely insensitive, unnecessarily graphic and disrespectful to families who lost loved ones on doomed Malaysian Airlines flight MH17. It was very distressing the more I read! God only knows how any grieving families felt if they even just saw this article, let alone read it!
My heart goes out to all
families suffering at this sad time, all my love and prayers.
Nikki Bone, Wellington
BLAME AND point-scoring seem to take precedence over logic and information here. MH17 was almost certainly brought down by a Buk missile fired by Ukrainian separatists. With a Buk system, you turn on the radar, find the target, shoot, turn it off and move. Failure to operate in short bursts leads to death because the radar is a homing signal for counter missiles. The Buk system cannot receive the signals informing it the craft is civilian. The separatists will be only partly trained. Such ignored facts are available to any cursory web search, and are largely ignored. Why think when you can blame Putin?
Much of the fault therefore lies with the airline. If you had to go from A to B, and the path crossed a live firing range, would you go straight on the principle they would stop firing, or would you go around the back of the shooters? This was not the time to save fuel.
Ian Miller, Lower Hutt
THE WORLD condemns rightly the fate of flight MH17, it should not also ignore pertinent points. It was a catastrophe but it was not an uncontrolled one as suggested in the column by Jonathan Freedland, quite the opposite. Uncontrolled catastrophes are things like earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions etc. This latest one could have been avoided. The fault lies no more with Russia supporting the separatists than it does with western governments wishing to see NATO bases established in Russia’s backyard.
Whichever, the area is one of a gung-ho armed conflict and only a fool should enter such an arena in the middle of a turf war.
It is likely that those who brought the aircraft down did not know it was a civilian flight. Instead, the notion of collateral damage is absorbed and the struggle continues. Governments and airlines that have turned a blind eye to flying through troubled skies must shoulder a responsibility, irrespective of cautions beforehand.
There is no excuse that airline companies can offer other than a desire to save fuel and maintain profits, which is disgraceful.
John D Mahony, Christchurch
IF OLGA Robertson (Sunday Star-Times 20 July) is worried about a backlash towards the Russian community then she should stop making ludicrous statements such as the Malaysian plane ‘‘might have been brought down by the US’’. She should go back to Russia with her naı¨ve views. With all the distress being felt by the relatives and friends of the victims in the plane crash it disgusts me that people make such repulsive comments.
Dale Adams, Wellington