Aviation expert: Planes should have military style defense system

GRABOVO, Ukraine (WPVI) -- It's still early in the investigation into the crash of Malaysia Airline Flight MH17, but there's a lot to take into account as the world tries to figure out what happened.

Arthur Wolk is a leading aviation expert and attorney based in Philadelphia. He makes a living out of suing airlines and governments on behalf of airplane crash victims.

He says that commercial liner should never have been in that airspace today.

"You would have thought the international airlines would have avoided that route," Wolk said.

Over the past week, Ukrainian separatists in the area of the Ukraine-Russia border have shot down two other planes, a cargo plane and a fighter jet.

It is a known, dangerous flashpoint.

It is bristling with anti-aircraft weapons, many of them in the hands of inexperienced civilian fighters.

It is a volatile combination.

"The risk is gigantic when those weapons are proliferated," Wolk said.

Israeli airliners are equipped with a jamming system that can thwart heat seeking shoulder fired rockets which can bring down a plane when it's below 20,000 feet.

There's an international move to require similar systems on all commercial airliners.

But that system would not have been effective against the kind of radar directed surface to air missile fired at Flight 17 Thursday.

They can easily hit a target above 20,000 feet.

That type of missile can only be deflected by a much more sophisticated system used on military aircraft.

Even at a cost of about $15-million each, Wolk says we've sadly come to the point where commercial airliners should be required to have a military style defense system.

"Given what happened today, I think we need to have some protections which are easily developed and already exist for military airplanes, installed in commercial airliners, especially in those that fly internationally," Wolk said.

Wolk says the cost of such a defense would come down considerably once it is widely used in commercial airliners.

But Wolk says whatever the cost, it should be mandated by the government.