A suspect charged with involvement in shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014 denied involvement in the attack in video interviews played Tuesday in a Dutch courtroom. The recorded comments by Oleg Putalov marked the first time the voice of one of the four suspects charged in the downing of the Boeing 777 has been heard in their trial in absentia. After years of investigations, prosecutors concluded that a Russian-made Buk missile launched from territory controlled by pro-Russian rebels brought down the passenger jet on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 passengers and crew on board as it was on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. An independent Dutch crash investigation earlier reached the same conclusion. Pulatov said he and his forces did not have a missile of the type that prosecutors say brought down the plane and added that he was busy at meetings on the day the plane was shot down and did not see or hear a Buk missile launch. In the interview with his Dutch lawyer that was recorded in Russia, Pulatov said that references to a Buk missile in intercepted communications that are part of prosecutors' evidence are actually deliberate misinformation. “Whenever you hear any kind of nonsense in the conversations intercepted like mentioning the Buk, you may rest assured that that was done for the deception purposes — we wanted to mislead our adversaries,” Pulatov said.<br/>
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Cathay Pacific’s largest unionised workforce has said it will push ahead with unspecified legal action in an ongoing row over salary-slashing new contracts after winning the overwhelming backing of its flight attendant members at an emergency meeting on Tuesday. The Flight Attendants Union’s move to stave off a fresh round of terminations on the heels of record lay-offs at Hong Kong’s flagship carrier came as one of the city’s largest aviation services firms announced it would be cutting 340 jobs, following Cathay and the wider industry’s lead in shedding costs amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Amber Suen, Flight Attendants Union internal vice-chairwoman, said the group had received legal advice suggesting it had grounds to challenge the airline’s vow to terminate staff, rather than make them redundant, should they refuse to sign much cheaper contracts in the wake of the lay-offs. “They should have given the same package as those who left us on the [21st of October],” she said, referring to the thousands of employees cut loose last month. However, the union said its legal challenge would take much longer than the airline’s looming deadline for signing the new contracts, which comes on Wednesday. “It won’t happen in days,” Suen cautioned. “It might take a longer period of time, but if you’re asking if we’re confident enough, we still have our members’ support and we’re doing everything we can to seek government support, contacting lawmakers to look into [the contract] and raise more awareness, because it doesn’t only affect us.” Some 1,682 members voted in favour of empowering the union to escalate its legal action, with only 10 against and the same number abstaining.<br/>
BA’s decision to retire its fleet of Boeing 747s will accelerate the airline’s sustainability efforts, according to recently appointed CE Sean Doyle. “That’s 32 older aircraft leaving British Airways, being replaced by modern 787 and A350 variants, and that’s an advancement of our [sustainability] commitment over the Covid crisis that we’re excited about,” Doyle said during the UK Royal Aeronautical Society’s Climate Change Conference. Those Airbus and Boeing widebody types are ”a huge enabler of more efficient operations”, Doyle said, explaining that BA expects to achieve an improvement “in terms of CO2 per kilometre travelled” as a result of the jumbos being retired early. The airline is currently assessing “exactly what that [improvement] would look like in the future”. Beyond fleet considerations, Doyle believes that BA parent company IAG’s commitment to achieving ”carbon net zero by 2050” will involve “many dimensions”. Noting that “there’s no silver bullet” in terms of improving aviation’s environmental footprint, he cited measures “like sustainable aviation fuel, like offsets, like emissions trading, like airspace management”, which are “fundamental to getting the industry to where it needs to get to”. Doyle also acknowledged that “there are more exciting longer-term technologies like hybrid, battery and hydrogen”, but says that BA sees ”those coming from about 2040 onwards”, rather than offering near-term solutions.<br/>