Report: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 downed in Ukraine by ‘high-energy objects’

A preliminary report on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 appears to confirm initial assertions that the passenger plane was hit by a surface-to-air-missile in midflight July 17 before crashing in Ukraine.

“The pattern of damage observed on the forward fuselage and cockpit section of the aircraft appears to indicate that there were impacts from a large number of high-energy objects from outside the aircraft,” concluded a report issued Tuesday by the Netherlands’ air safety board.

The Boeing 777, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, was flying at about 33,000 feet over separatist-held territory in southeastern Ukraine when it broke apart in midair and crashed, killing all 298 passengers and crew members on board.

The report says that fragments of the aircraft reveal numerous puncture holes and indentations on the plane’s skin that would be consistent with damage from missile shrapnel and, investigators say, rule out pilot error or any mechanical fault as the cause of the disaster.

Although investigators have not been able to recover these pieces for forensic examination, the report states that “the pattern of damage observed was not consistent with the damage that would be expected from any known failure mode of the aircraft, its engines or systems.”

Working with experts from several other countries, including Malaysia, Russia and the United States, the Dutch team evaluated air-traffic control information along with photographs of the wreckage and data from the plane’s flight recorders.

Photographs and satellite images show debris spread out over an area of about 3 miles by 6 miles.

“The distribution of pieces of the aircraft over a large area indicates that the aircraft broke up in the air,” the report says. “Fuselage pieces, cargo and baggage were scattered through the wreckage site.”

Parts from the front of the plane were found closest to the plane’s last recorded position, indicating these were the first sections to break apart. The center and rear sections landed farther away. “This indicates that these parts continued in a down and forward trajectory before breaking up.”

The plane’s cockpit voice and flight data recorders, often referred to collectively as the “black boxes,” were not recovered by investigators but were removed from the wreckage by unknown individuals and turned over to a Malaysian official in the eastern Ukraine city of Donetsk several days after the crash.

Internal memory modules showed that communication from the crew gave no indication that anything had gone wrong with the flight.