WASHINGTON, July 18 (RIA Novosti) – The US Federal Aviation Authority has issued a notice prohibiting flight operations over eastern Ukraine after the crash of a Malaysian passenger plane, according to its website.
“The restricted area includes the entire Simferopol and Dnepropetrovsk flight information regions (FIRs),” the US aviation authority said on its website citing safety concerns.
It said all US flight operations were prohibited until further notice “due to recent events and the potential for continued hazardous activities.”
The notice came after a Malaysia Airlines passenger plane carrying 298 people, including three infants, crashed in east Ukraine on a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. Most of the passengers were Dutch, the air carrier’s webpage said.
This restriction ban expands an earlier order that prohibited American airlines from using flight routes over and around the Crimean peninsula. It was issued in April, nearly a month after the region voted in a referendum to leave Ukraine for Russia.
The FAA has forbidden flight operations over the Crimean peninsula and adjacent areas of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.
Contact with the crashed Boeing-777 aircraft was lost when the airliner was in the Ukrainian airspace. It followed a report from the Ukrainian authorities that said a plane went down north of the town of Torez in the Donetsk region. Both the Ukrainian authorities and Malaysian Airlines are investigating the incident.
