What can you say? This is just appalling, but I doubt there will be much else in the terms of consequences for those who shot it down.

Seems it was a BUK 17 that did the damage.

Confirmed shoot down.

Rolling coverage on ABCNEWS24

Thought the same.

Very sad indeed. Not sure whether true or not but just read there were approx 70 children on board and I just saw a photo of a deceased baby in a field. Very disturbing.

Overheard the NO FLY ZONE was below 30,000ft. The aircraft was travelling around 32,000 - 34,000 when the incident happened (Came from the Today Show) . Very Sad to see another one go down.

Apprantly sunrise said that the black box has been taken to Moscow already????

There's an image of a firefighter with bodies to the left & right of him...just awful.

Yes, sadly, there will be lots of noise, but little action. The UN will sit on their hands and the Russians and Ukranians will blame each other. Russia has reportedly taken custody of the FDR etc - not that it is really needed to determine the cause in this case.

Meanwhile, MH will probably see its International Operations fall off dramatically, and other Airlines are already avoiding the Airspace (Flightradar24 shows almost nothing over the Ukraine at present).

Read that the 777-200 that flew MH17 was going to continue to Melbourne as MH129.

KUL website shows MH129 as closed and MEL website still shows MH129 on schedule for 20:25 arrival, so the flight is going ahead albeit on a different aircraft. Also, in the midst of such tragedies, how do airlines react to their other operations in terms of reallocating aircraft, changing manifests, etc. I'm sure they would have SOPs in place and it would be somewhat 'business as usual', although under very trying circumstances I'm sure.

I guess it depends on just how many surplus Aircraft MH have - they are now down 2 x 772's, though their load factors are probably down since March as well. I would expect that most Airlines have SOP's in place to deal with unserviceable aircraft, but it probably doesn't extend to hull losses.

MH129 has always been operated with A330-300's. MH149/148 is operated by B777-200's, which MRD last operated on 7/7/14.

Thanks for the clarification Stefan. Saw articles related to same aircraft for MH129 on both News Corp and Fairfax media sources. News Corp article stated "same aircraft" and I can no longer find that article, while Fairfax stated "connecting" to Melbourne.

At any rate, my post was pertaining to operational reactions in such cases.