Why was flight 17 flying over a war zone? -Yahoo/AP

It's been a tough year for Malaysia Airlines. -Yahoo/AP

Why was flight 17 flying over a war zone? -Yahoo/AP. War zones are often ignored by airlines. In this case some airlines did avoid the war zone but many others did not. The bottom line is that it would cost money for the airlines to have avoided the combat zone.

My Comment:

 Like always, it comes down to money. These airlines did not want to eat the costs of rerouting these flights. Passenger air travel is especially sensitive to operating costs, and anything that increases these costs will be avoided if at all possible. 

Some airlines did avoid the area. Malaysia Airlines was not one of them. I think it has a lot to do with the disappearance of Flight 370. That black eye must have hurt their business considerably, so it makes some sense that they would take the risk. It really backfired on them though, nobody is going to want to get on a Malaysia Airlines flight right now.

As for the risk, people should have known the danger. I reported that very morning that there were planes being shot at and being shot down in the region. I understand that these Ukrainian planes were taken down by MANPADS, which don't have the range to hit passenger planes at cruising altitude (and possibly in one case in a air-to-air battle) and not the SA-17 "Buk" missiles, but the risk was obvious. Everyone involved with the risk management for these airlines knew that both the Ukrainians and the Russians had sophisticated anti-air systems that could hit cruising altitude passenger planes, with operators who had very good reason to be trigger happy, but they chose to ignore the threat. 

I know that both the Russian and Ukrainian governments approved the flight plan for Flight 17 but no matter who shot down the plane I believe that the airline deserves quite a bit of blame as well. Profit margins are all well and good but lives trump anything. And even the most cold-hearted capitalist could see that getting a plane full of passengers killed is bad for business.The other airlines who were lucky enough to avoid losing a plane should be criticized as well.