UK pilots’ union BALPA has criticized national regulators’ airspace policies, saying there must be "a uniform level of safety, not one decided in secret".
BALPA has also called for "global leadership" from the ICAO in flight operations in proximity to areas of hostility.
BALPA General Secretary Jim McAuslan said: "Individual pilots looking at their flight plans need to have absolute confidence that the right calls are being made. The process behind the choice of airspace routing is based on a risk assessment, both by a country's national aviation security services in the advice that they give to their airlines, and by the airline in how they assess this advice.”
McAuslan added: "This risk assessment approach can give an illusion of safety but it is in fact vulnerable to all sorts of influences including commercial pressure and so it is not surprising to us that there are differences in the way that this risk is assessed by different airlines."
BALPA also stated that although ICAO is the UN body responsible for coordinating global aviation, it should have a greater leadership role and strengthened powers along with that responsibility.
McAuslan said: "ICAO's purpose should be to lead where national authorities cannot and it should have the tools to do that. The problem of the absence of a clear international co-ordination to avoid operations above eastern Ukraine has now become tragically obvious and to avoid a repeat ICAO should be better resourced and enabled to declare airspace unsafe.