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MH17 crew noticed surface-to-air missile just moment before explosion — crash modelling

The missile exploded near the passenger airliner’s nose part, with the explosion mainly damaging the first pilot’s seat, according to Russia’s Almaz-Antey antiaircraft manufacturer

MOSCOW, June 8. /TASS/. The crew of the Malaysian MH17 flight downed in east Ukraine last summer noticed an approaching missile fired from the Buk air defense system just a moment before the explosion, according to the crash simulation results released by Russia’s Almaz-Antey antiaircraft manufacturer on Monday.

The missile exploded near the passenger airliner’s nose part, with the explosion mainly damaging the first pilot’s seat and also virtually slashing the cockpit’s right-hand side from the aircraft’s fuselage, Almaz-Antey said in its full version of the presentation on the modelled causes for the MH17 crash, which was obtained by TASS news agency.

The presentation held at a briefing on June 2 comprises 53 transparencies and provides a detailed simulation of the encounter between the airliner and the 9M38M1 missile and gives a large number of exclusive photographs and diagrams, shows unclassified data on the consequences of the missile’s warhead detonation and the spread of the cloud of striking elements.

Almaz-Antey CEO Yan Novikov has said the MH17 flight simulation shows that the manufacturer’s products were not involved in the Malaysian Boeing disaster as the 9M38M1 missile was withdrawn from production in Russia in 1999.

The Malaysia Airlines Boeing-777 passenger airliner on a flight from the Dutch city of Amsterdam to the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur crashed in the area of hostilities between local militias and Ukrainian governmental troops in east Ukraine’s Donetsk region in July last year. All 298 people aboard the airliner died in the air crash.

Most of the air crash’s victims were Dutch nationals.