Iran shoots down civilian plane

Not putting the blame on the pilots, the airliner is the responsible party. And NOTAMS were issued to the region before the launches. It was some itchy trigger finger, it happens. Middle Eastern pilots are known for forgetting to do things like turn on transponders and code IFF wrong. In my days as an air traffic controller one thing I learned, middle eastern and pakistani pilots are the worst. I would never fly on that region, period, full stop. I agree it's amateurish, that's them. USS Vincennes shot down a slow moving scheduled airliner in a known flight corridor ascending and got mistaken for an F16 descending on an attack profile, how do you screw that one up? It's called screwing the pooch. There's been lots of incompetent people pushing buttons, I just hope my daughter sitting in a Titan III missile silo in North Dakota isn't one of them.

Gotta read the whole thing Prof .... further down "This civilian aircraft was not equipped to pick up military frequencies and the messages on the civilian emergency channel could have been directed at any aircraft." ... which is absolutely true. The Guard Channel is used for emergencies and civilian airliners aren't built for military communications. The Vincennes hailed as "Unidentified Iranian Aircraft". As far as the pilots of the Iranian airliner were concerned they weren't having and emergency, they weren't unidentified and they were on their flight path ascending in a normal profile for the plane. Vincennes guys were all jacked up to do something, that's what training does. There was alot of confusion in the Vincenes CnC pod at the time. When you're in high stress situations, training takes over and common sense goes out the window.