Fears panicky North Korea could shoot down passenger jet in MH17-style atrocity or down flight with wayward nuke missile
AIRLINES are dodging the skies of North Korea and Japan over fears their flights will be downed by a rogue nuke or shot down after being mistaken for a military jet.
The news comes after trigger-happy tyrant Kim Jong-un launched his 19th unannounced missile of 2017 - sparking real terror in the skies.
One passenger who landed at Osaka, in Japan, told how the pilot on his flight even announced that a missile was airborne.
Today's launch came just a month after an Air France flight from Tokyo to Paris - with 323 people on board - flew directly into the path of one of Kim's ICBMs.
"Some airlines have indicated they are changing their flight paths to avoid flying over North Korea and the area between North Korea and Hokkaido (in Japan)," Ellis Taylor of
Air France expanded their no-fly zone around North Korea after August's shocking near-miss.
Mr Taylor added: "The decision came after one of their aircrafts had come within 100km (60 miles) of one of North Korea's previous missile tests.
"On their flights to Tokyo and Osaka it's now taking between 10 to 30 minutes longer because they are trying to go around that area."
Horrific events like the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) over Ukraine also mean airlines are extremely aware of the risks of planes getting misidentified as a military flight.
Experts today said they feared the current situation was an "accident" waiting to happen.
"These missile tests do pose a risk for commercial planes," said Ankit Panda, associate editor of The Diplomat.
North Korea never announces its missile tests which mean they come without warning or known flight path.
Other countries put out notices well ahead of any tests to allow airlines and ships to avoid certain areas.
"Determining the actual risk of an incident is difficult though," Mr Panda explains.
"Ultimately you're talking about to two fairly small objects coming into contact in three dimensional space."
Doomed flight MH17 was a scheduled passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur that was shot down on 17 July 2014 while flying over eastern Ukraine, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew on board.
The missile was fired from a territory controlled by Russian separatists.
As tensions heat up on the Korean peninsula, airlines may even decide to avoid the region all together.
"Pyongyang certainly wants to minimise the risk of any incident," Mr Panda explains.
"Contrary to what people might think, they don't want an incident. They would look to a trajectory that minimises risk."
But that doesn't stop a collision if one of Kim's rockets veers off course - which has been known to have happened several times in the past.
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