FILE PHOTO: General view of the debris of the Ukraine International Airlines, flight PS752, Boeing 737-800 plane that crashed after take-off from Iran's Imam Khomeini airport, on the outskirts of Tehran, Iran January 8, 2020 is seen in this screen grab obtained from a social media video via REUTERS
MONTREAL/KUALA LUMPUR/PARIS (Reuters) - Why was the Ukrainian airliner mistakenly shot down near Tehran by Iranian forces last week for the loss of 176 lives even allowed to take off from a country that had just fired missiles towards its neighbour? And why didn't the airline just delay or cancel the flight?
In short - because a century of international air travel has yielded no international agreement on how or when to close airspace; and because airlines often have to rely on their own, sometimes incomplete, assessments to make the call for themselves.
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