THE president of Gulf airline Emirates has challenged the aviation industry and authorities to do more to prevent atrocities such as the downing of the Malaysian Airlines' flight.
Sir Tim Clark insisted the notion that airlines are reckless and select routes to minimise fuel costs is "anathema to the DNA and chemistry of what we do".
But he conceded "the way we go about our business has to change" following the attack over Ukraine last week, which left 289 passengers and crew dead.
Calling for the aviation sector to be given more information about potential security risks, Sir Tim said: "The safety of our passengers and crew and everybody else is our first priority and we have clear, empirical evidence of the airline community avoiding, flying round or simply avoiding flying to areas of conflict, and that goes back 50, 60, 70 years, post-war.
"This one, an aircraft flying in what it thought was controlled airspace, complying with its requirements of flying above a certain altitude, taking third party nationals from one point to another to get taken down... My comments are no different to anyone else's: outrage, anger and desperation."
Sir Tim, in Scotland to launch the Dubai-based airline's £2 million lounge at Glasgow Airport, called on intelligence-gathering agencies to pass on more information about risks to the International Civil Aviation Organisation, which he also urged to "lift its game".
Sir Tim, who noted the aviation community will "close ranks" to support colleagues at Malaysian Airlines, said: "It's all very well speaking in hindsight, but one thing's for sure: we have got to be better at risk assessment than we have been in the past."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article