A Delhi-bound Air India flight was less than five minutes behind Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 when it was shot down over eastern Ukraine on Thursday, sending all 298 passengers and crew onboard to their deaths.
Air India flight 113, with 126 passengers, had taken off from Birmingham and was right behind MH17 when a surface-to-air missile struck the Boeing 777 and brought it down in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, The Times of India reported.
Another plane, a Singapore Airlines flight from Copenhagen, was also behind the Kuala Lumpur-bound flight before it met its fate. Both planes were nearly 25 to 50 nautical miles behind MH17, a distance that pilots say can be flown within five minutes.
Airlines have been warned not to fly over conflict ridden Ukraine to avoid any potential contact with pro-Russian rebels on the ground, who have previously shot down Ukraine military aircraft. The Air India flight was also supposed to take a different route.
Top Air India directors "had issued a directive to avoid Ukraine's conflict zone ever since hostilities broke out in the region," an official from the airline told The Times of India. "We were taking a route that did not fly over the worst affected area that has been recognized as the conflict zone. But after the attack we have decided to avoid Ukraine completely."
Pilots continued to fly over Ukraine because the country lies in a direct path between western Europe and southeast Asia.
"Also airlines and pilots have long held this belief that once they are 33,000 feet over ground level, they are in a different world that has its own ecosystem, its own risks but no danger from the ground. MH17 has shattered that myth forever," an unnamed senior commander told the newspaper.
Flight MH17 was reportedly 33,000 feet in the air when the atrocity occurred.
