About airlines:
– it will be very difficult for Malaysian Airlines to recover after 2 major aircraft losses 4 months apart
– all the airlines claim that the safety comes first, but it took 298 lives to avoid the airspace over the conflict area
– about the Air Traffic Control (both Eurocontrol and Ukrainian ATC): they have their part of the fault in the sense that they could have requested the traffic to be diverted out of the conflict area. The only thing that they did was to ask the aircraft to climb 1000 meters feet above the normal cruising altitude; still insufficient to avoid the missile.

Image: Boston.com

About causes:
– it becomes more and more clear that the aircraft was taken down by a missile
– this was done by the pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine, with some logistical/technical help from the Russian army
– it was probably done by mistake; thinking they shoot an Ukrainian aircraft
– they already took down 2 Ukrainian army aircrafts in the week before the accident
– the Ukrainian army had the weapons to do it, but no reason. The fight against the rebels would not involve any ground-to-air missiles since the rebels had no air force

What will come:
– the pro-Russian rebels will do their best to cover the traces and to make an official investigation next to impossible
– the Russians will never admit they are involved into this – neither directly nor indirectly
– the world will have an increasing antipathy for the Russian government
– the #MH370 flight is probably one of the greatest mysteries in the recent history of aviation. The #MH17 flight will most probably remain without anyone admitting the fault
– the conflict at the border of Ukraine will not end with this accident

Some remarks

One of the most powerful reactions in the online comes from The Economist:

Someone comments on the smell: acrid, heavy. Only death smells this way.
This is not a disaster. This is hell

It looks like in that part of Ukraine the sky is always grey:

Update: Some context from 2012