Remembering Malaysia flight 17

MALAYSIA AIRLINES B777-2H6 9M-MRD (CN 28411)

SPORTING THE "FREEDOM OF SPACE" LIVERY

Malaysia flight MH 17 (codeshare with KLM Flight 4103) was a scheduled passenger flight from Amsterdam (AMS/EHAM) to Kuala Lumpur (KUL/WMKK) and was shot down on the 17th July 2014 while flying over eastern Ukraine, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew on board.
The incident was and still is the deadliest airliner shootdown incident to date. All 283 passengers and 15 crew died. The crew were all Malaysian, while over two-thirds (68%) of the passengers were Dutch. Most of the other passengers were Malaysians and Australians, the remainder were citizens of 7 other countries. At least twenty family groups were on the aircraft and eighty passengers were under the age of 18.

Nation Number 
Netherlands 193
Malaysia 43
Australia 27
Indonesia 12
United Kingdom 10
Germany 4
Belgium 4
Philippines 3
Canada 1
New Zealand 1
Total 298 

On the 19th June 2019, the Dutch Public Prosecution Service charged four people with murder in connection with the shooting down of the aircraft: three Russians, Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinsky, and Igor Pulatov, and one Ukrainian, Leonid Kharchenko. International arrest warrants were issued in respect of each of the accused. Their trial in absentia is scheduled to be held on the 9th March 2020 in the District Court of The Hague. I posted a story on this on the 21st June.

https://madaboutplanes.blogspot.com/2019/06/four-charged-with-murder-over-downing.html

MH 17 was operated by a Boeing 777-2H6ER registration 9M-MRD (CN 28411). MRD was the 84th Boeing 777 produced, it first flew on the 17th July 1997, exactly 17 years before the incident, and was delivered new to Malaysia Airlines on the 29th July 1997. Powered by two Rolls-Royce Trent 892 engines and carrying 280 seats (33 business and 247 economy), the aircraft had recorded more than 76,300 hours in 11,430 cycles before the crash.


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