An Air India plane was not on the same flight path as the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines aircraft over the Ukrainian airspace when it was shot down, a senior airlines official said on Sunday.
“We have stopped flying over the conflict zone to the north of Ukraine for the past three months. After the fresh DGCA directive (two days ago), we have completely stopped operating on the Ukrainian airspace,” the official, who requested anonymity, said.
He said the airspace over the CIS nation was divided into five flight separate zones and there were different flight corridors for flights going on different directions.
While the ill-fated MH17 was going from west to east, the Air India plane was going the opposite direction, he said.
Both Ukraine and Russia have been accusing each other of shooting down the plane with a surface-to-air missile, which killed all 298 people on board.