As the world knows, a Malaysian Airlines plane was shot down by militants in Ukraine on July 17, killing 298 people. But just 25 km behind this were two other planes: one belonging to Air India and the other to Singapore Airlines. The Air India plane had 126 people on board.

This is the information freely available on the website FlightRadar24. Ever since the Malaysian Airlines plane crashed, this website has revealed that many airlines, such as Finnair, Singapore Airlines, Air India and Jet Airways, flew over eastern Ukraine on the day of the crash and the day after, even though some claimed not to have.

While flying over eastern Ukraine does not violate any rules, it is dangerous territory.

Jet Airways has not responded, but India’s civil aviation ministry said the state-owned Air India had not been anywhere close to the Malaysian Airlines. Finnair first denied it and then publicly apologised for doing so.

The website has also revealed that another Malaysian Airlines plane was found, on Sunday, flying over another war zone, Syria – the only transcontinental flight over the region. This is a change from the route over Ukraine but Syria isn’t a safe area either.

Flightradar24 once even exposed the Malaysian prime minister, when he tried to conceal the destination of a private trip in 2012 in Parliament. The website provides real-time flight tracking for thousands of aircraft around the world, 24 hours a day, and has been doing so since 2007.

 

“The technology we use to receive flight information from aircraft is called ADS-B,” explains Flightradar24 on their website. “Roughly 60% of all passenger aircraft around the world are equipped with an ADS-B transponder. However, this percentage will continue to grow. The majority of the data displayed on Flightradar24.com and in our apps is gathered through a network of 500+ ADS-B receivers around the world.”

The ADS-B transponder on board the aircraft transmits the signal and other information, which is then picked up by a receiver and relayed back to the website.



Air India plane
We can also tell, from data on this site and another called Flightaware, how fast the Air India plane was travelling.

The flight, Air India 787, travelling to Birmingham from Delhi, was moving at approximately 460 knots, which is equivalent to 851.92 km/h or 14.2 km/minute. The Indian plane was flying 7,000 feet above the Malaysian aircraft. This is not unusual because planes flying in opposite directions do so at different levels in order to avoid colliding.

The civil aviation ministry said a day after the crash that that no Indian plane had been close to the Malaysian aircraft, while an Air India spokesman did not answer calls made by Scroll.in.