Why airlines didn't avoid risky Ukraine airspace

The possibility that the civilian jetliner downed over war-torn eastern Ukraine with nearly 300 people onboard was hit by a missile could have profound consequences for the world's airlines.

Airlines might have to be more vigilant about avoiding trouble spots, making flights longer and causing them to burn more costly fuel. They may even be forced to reconsider many international routes.

In the hours after Thursday's disaster involving a Malaysia Airlines jet, carriers around the globe began rerouting flights to avoid Ukraine. Some had been circumventing the country for weeks. Experts questioned the airline's decision to fly near the fighting, even as Malaysia's prime minister said that the plane's route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was declared safe by international aviation authorities.

"I find it pretty remarkable that a civil airline company — if this aircraft was on the flight plan — that they are flight-planning over an area like that," said Robert Francis, a former vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. "You wonder a little bit about Malaysia Airlines, if that's true."

Violence in Ukraine has increased since late 2013 between the government and pro-Russia rebels in the eastern and southern portions of the country. Earlier this week, the rebels claimed responsibility for hitting a Ukrainian military jet with a portable surface-to-air missile; the pilot was able to land safely. And the government charged that a military transport plane was shot down by a missile fired from Russian territory.

In April, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration cautioned airlines that Russia's claim to the airspace over Ukraine's Crimea could lead to conflicting air traffic control instructions. A few weeks later, the FAA issued a tougher warning, telling pilots not to fly over the area, and the U.N.'s International Civil Aviation Organization told governments to warn their airlines. Thursday's crash, however, occurred outside the warning areas.

Thomas Routh, an aviation attorney in Chicago, said it would be unusual for an airline to ignore such warnings, but he said it's up to airlines to decide whether a flight will be safe for crew and passengers.

"There are airlines flying through Afghanistan airspace every day," Routh said.

John Cox, a former airline pilot and accident investigator, said despite the cautions, the airspace was not closed. The Malaysia Airlines crew filed a flight plan and "Russia and the Ukraine both accepted the airplane into their airspace," he said.

Rerouting planes around war zones costs airlines money, as the planes burn more expensive jet fuel. Aviation expert Norman Shanks said many airlines continued to fly over Ukraine despite warnings because it offered a shorter route that saved money on fuel.

Greg Raiff, an aviation consultant in New Hampshire, said that if airlines must avoid flying over all the world's hot spots, flight times would be extended, requiring extra fuel and pilots. That might make some routes uneconomical, forcing airlines to abandon them.

Airlines quickly changed some routes. Snapshots from flight-tracking services showed dense traffic to the west, light traffic to the east, but very few planes over Ukraine.

Emirates airlines said that one of its jets bound for Ukraine's capital of Kiev turned around and returned to Dubai. The airline suspended all flights to Kiev indefinitely. It emphasized that flights to and from the U.S. and other European destinations don't fly over the area where the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 crashed.

Germany's Lufthansa immediately rerouted all overflights to avoid eastern Ukraine, although flights to Kiev and Odessa were not affected. Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines said that none of its flights operated over the portion of Ukraine covered by the FAA security advisory, but added that it would stop routing flights over any part of the country.

Airlines don't always risk flying over conflict areas.

Australia's Qantas stopped flying over Ukraine several months ago and shifted its London-Dubai route 645 kilometers (400 miles) to the south. A spokeswoman declined to explain the change. Korean Air Line said it had rerouted cargo and passenger flights in early March amid the worsening situation over the Crimean peninsula.

Emirates stopped flying over parts of Syria as a civil war there expanded. Some airlines have curtailed service in Iraq, where violence has escalated between the government and a jihadist militant group. Some of the other places that the FAA also currently warns pilots to avoid parts of include Iran, Yemen, the Sinai peninsula and North Korea.

Last month, a gunman in Pakistan fired on a jetliner that was landing in Peshawar, part of the country's volatile northwest region, killing a passenger and wounding two other people. Emirates suspended flights to Peshawar, and other carriers canceled some flights while they reviewed airport security. Two weeks before that, gunmen attacked the country's busiest airport in Karachi.

Joan Lowy and Sagar Meghani in Washington and Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.

Grain mixed, livestock mostly higher

CHICAGO -- Grain futures were Mixed Friday in early trading on the Chicago Board of Trade.

Wheat for Sept delivery was unchanged at $5.5075 a bushel; Sept corn was 2.50 cents lower at $3.77 a bushel; Dec oats were unchanged at $3.3225 a bushel; while Nov soybeans was 1.50 cents higher at $10.9450 a bushel.

Beef higher and pork were mixed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

Aug live cattle was 1.15 cent higher at $1.5180 a pound; Aug feeder cattle was 1.30 cents higher at 2.1290 a pound; Aug lean hogs loss 1.35 cents to $1.2750 a pound.

Making boat covers a challenging business

MADISON, Wis. -- Steve Griffith admits that making boat covers was kind of a career fallback plan.

"But I guess if I can't be a billionaire," he said, "I might as well make boat covers for a living."

And so he has, since 1990, when he opened Marine Tops Unlimited in Madison.

And while it might not have made him a billionaire, it has provided a comfortable living and satisfied his need to seek creative solutions and to work with his hands.

Still, he acknowledges that making custom boat covers and related boating equipment is a niche industry and not that high on most people's lists of career options.

"It doesn't seem like anyone is knocking at the door saying, 'Hey, teach me how to do this,' " said Griffith, 57. "Like the tattoo parlor next door, there are people wanting to be the next best tattoo artist every day. You don't see a lot of people saying, 'Yeah, I want to learn how to build boat covers.'

"It's a dying industry, unfortunately," he told the Wisconsin State Journal (http://bit.ly/1wrX3ps).

It's one he got into pretty much by accident and happenstance.

After graduating from Madison East High School in 1975, Griffith went to work in the parts department of a local auto retailer. He got involved with the Capital City Ski Team — now the Mad-City Ski team — and that brought him into contact with a tournament boat manufacturer in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He eventually went to work for that company, commuting from Madison for more than five years.

"I built boats for a living," he said. "I did everything from taking orders to putting them in production to laying the fiberglass to putting the upholstery in, rigging the motors and all kinds of stuff."

When that company was bought out, his job became primarily sales. Part of that job involved setting up shop at boat shows around the area, including one in Green Bay, where the neighboring booth each year was occupied by an Omro company, Marine Tops Unlimited.

One year the owner of Marine Tops, Carl Van Damme, asked Griffith if he'd be interested in trying to sell boat covers while he was going around selling other boating equipment.

"I told him, if anything, I could probably sell some boat covers in Madison for him," Griffith said. "We figured out a pricing schedule and he started to show me how to take patterns and some of the basics.

"Eventually, the boat cover market in Madison became bigger for me than traveling around trying to sell boats and everything else, so I opened Marine Tops Madison."

Marine Tops is one of three companies in the Madison area that make boat covers and related equipment. Gallagher Tent and Awning, which has been in operation since the 1880s, does boat covers along with tents and awnings. And a former Gallagher employee, Kris Stone, opened Kris' Custom Sewing in 1990.

"I wasn't sure there was that much work out there, but there are so many things to do, it's unreal," said Stone, who estimates that 60 percent to 80 percent of her work is boat-related.

"Interiors of boats are just crazy. Every boat is different and that's the challenge. There's plenty for all of us to do."

The big challenge for the custom designer is to convince a customer that it's worth it to pay extra for a boat cover designed specifically for their boat rather than picking up a cheaper, generic cover on the Internet or at a big box store.

"Boat covers aren't cheap — at least custom ones aren't," said Griffith, whose business is almost entirely boating-related. "But we live in a big box world. You can go to a big box store and get one for $100. I get them in here all the time. They last a year or two, and then they're falling apart.

"That's where you have to educate people. You have to make them understand that it's made out of better material, it's designed and engineered specifically for your boat, not to fit 10 different kinds of boats. I look at myself as a craftsman or an artist, with some of the stuff we design and build."

Scott Henrikson sees Griffith's work pretty much the same way.

Henrikson, sales manager at Skipper Bud's in Madison, observed his work on several boats and was so impressed that he hired Griffith to do some extensive work on his own boat, which doubles as his summer home.

"In my eyes, there isn't anyone around that can match the quality of the work he does," said Henrikson, who lives in Wisconsin Dells when not on his boat. "And I'm picky. When I let people do things on my boat, they need to be done right, and he definitely does that."

Henrikson's project involved redesigning the cockpit of the boat to increase the space, adding screens and privacy glass.

While some projects like that can be quite extensive and run up to $10,000 or $15,000, the bulk of Griffith's work is more modest in scale all the way down to $200 canoe covers and even less expensive repair jobs.

Most of the boats he works on are from 32 feet on down. Many trailer-able boats are dropped off at his shop, where he has two industrial sewing machines and a big, $9,000 double-needle machine capable of sewing four layers of Harley-Davidson saddlebag leather material.

"My mom taught me to do basic sewing when I was a kid, and they used to teach sewing in home ec at East High School," he said. "And a lot I've learned from trial and error. A lot of the upholstery is so intricate that it gets to be a little challenging."

A majority of jobs are done on location as Griffith regularly ventures out to the Madison area marinas, as well as outlying areas like Lodi, Merrimac and Wisconsin Dells. His service van has 226,000 miles on it and contains a sewing machine and all the equipment needed to perform most tasks.

Most of the sewing work, however, is done at the Omro shop, which has six employees.

Griffith makes a weekly run to Omro to deliver new patterns — drawn on plastic or paper much like a dress pattern — and picking up finished products.

And while he spends his time working on other people's boats, Griffith likes to look at each project as if he were going to be living with it.

"I always look at a project and say, 'What would I want it to be if it was my boat?'?" he said. "I always ask a customer where their boat is going to live, whether it's going to be on a trailer, in a garage, on a hoist or in the water.

"That all makes a difference in what kind of cover is going to serve them best. It's what's going to work best for you and what can I do to make your boat experience better."

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Information from: Wisconsin State Journal, http://bit.ly/1h0h8BG

An AP Member Exchange Feature shared by Wisconsin State Journal

Double disasters taint Malaysia Airlines

HONG KONG -- Hit by two astonishing tragedies in quick succession, the Malaysia Airlines brand may become the airline industry's equivalent of asbestos or News of the World: toxic to the public and, experts say, impossible to redeem.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was downed over eastern Ukraine on Thursday with 298 people aboard by what American intelligence authorities believe was a surface-to-air missile. Just four months earlier, a Malaysia Airlines jetliner carrying 239 people disappeared about an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur. The jet has still not been found, a source of profound unease for travelers and the aviation industry.

"I can't comprehend of anything they can do to save themselves," said Mohshin Aziz, an aviation analyst at Maybank in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

"Perception-wise it really hits home," Aziz said. "It's very challenging. It's very difficult to fight against negative perception."

Even before the Flight 370 mystery, state-owned Malaysia Airlines was in serious financial trouble. In an industry notorious for impoverishing shareholders and irking customers, Malaysia Airlines had long stood out for its years of restructurings and losses.

That disaster along with the often bumbling response of Malaysia Airlines and the Malaysian government deeply scarred the carrier. Now, the once proud national airline is facing the unthinkable again.

Already losing about $1.6 million a day, there will be "no miracles" for Malaysia Airlines, said Aziz. Before the Ukrainian disaster, his opinion was the airline didn't have the capacity to survive beyond a year.

The airline's share price plummeted 11 percent Friday.

Unlike Flight 370, the responsibility for which is pinned with Malaysia Airlines, the second disaster appears largely beyond the airline's control. It may, however, face questions about why it continued with flight paths over eastern Ukraine, which is the heart of a violent rebellion against Kiev, when some airlines were circumventing the country.

For air travelers in Asia, who have a multitude of options thanks to the budget airline boom, the latest incident will make the Malaysian carrier even less attractive. Its brand in the rest of the world, where it became known largely because of the Flight 370 mystery, will become more closely associated with the worst fears of fliers.

Danny Gokul, an Australian university student on a layover at Incheon International Airport in South Korea, said he had flown with Malaysian Airlines before and its service was "fantastic."

But he is now "very hesistant" about using the airline. "Flying is scary enough."

His friend, Dayne Rodgers, waiting for a flight to Brisbane, Australia said even very cheap fares might not convince him to fly with Malaysia Airlines.

"I don't know if my Mum would let me," he said.

Within Malaysia, the shock is palpably raw.

"I was stunned," said 48-year-old shopkeeper Reezal Mohamed. "At first I could not understand. It's unbelievable."

Malaysia Airlines has been in the red for the last three years. Last year, its losses ballooned to 1.17 billion ringgit ($363 million), nearly three times larger than its 433 million ringgit loss in 2012.

As a state-owned flag carrier, it is required to fly unprofitable domestic routes, and its strong union has resisted operational changes. Nimbler discount rivals such as Air Asia have expanded rapidly, while Malaysia Airlines has been like a supertanker, slow to change direction.

Seth Kaplan, managing partner of industry newsletter Airline Weekly, said the airline was in "worse shape" financially that almost any other airline before Flight 370 vanished.

"It's just hard to imagine that they could have even survived the first incident without a lot of government help and now they're going to need even more," he said.

Wright reported from Bangkok. AP Business Writer Youkyung Lee in Seoul, South Korea, AP writer Satish Cheney in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and AP Airlines Writer Scott Mayerowitz in New York contributed.

SC jobless figure unchanged for 3rd straight month

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- South Carolina's unemployment rate remained unchanged for the third month in a row, holding steady at 5.3 percent in June, state officials said Friday.

In a news release, the Department of Employment and Workforce said that the number of unemployed in South Carolina went up by 630 over the last month, to more than 115,500. There were more than 2 million employed people, a drop of nearly 850 since May.

Unemployment rates went up last month in all of South Carolina's 46 counties except three. York and Aiken counties' jobless figures went down, and unemployment in Horry County was unchanged from May.

When South Carolina's unemployment initially fell to 5.3 percent in April, officials said that figure was the state's lowest level in 13 years. The rate stayed steady in May, when federal officials said South Carolina's 5.3 percent was 2.6 percent lower than a year earlier, a change that represented the largest year-to-year drop in the country.

Again last month, South Carolina's year-to-year drop of 2.5 percent was the largest in the country, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nationally, unemployment was 6.1 percent in June, down from 6.3 percent in May.

In South Carolina, officials said jobs in the professional and business services, education and health services and leisure and hospitality sectors were up by a combined 5,900 jobs. Since June 2013, those three sectors have increased by about 26,700 jobs.

Gold and silver prices settle lower after jump

Gold prices are settling lower to end the week, a day after concerns about a conflict between Russia and Ukraine shot prices up.

Gold for August delivery fell $7.50, or 0.6 percent, to $1,309.40 an ounce. Silver for September sank 25 cents, or 1.2 percent, to $20.89.

Markets were rattled on Thursday following news that a passenger plane was shot down over eastern Ukraine, a battleground where government troops have been fighting Russian-backed separatists. Speculation that tensions between Russia and Ukraine could boil over sent traders into precious metals.

Dan Walsh, market strategist at RJ O'Brien & Associates in Chicago, says that with no escalation on Friday, traders were more willing to buy riskier assets, like stocks.

Industrial metals also settled lower Friday. Crude oil slipped to $103.13 a barrel.

Pascagoula health clinic being closed

PASCAGOULA, Miss. -- The Singing River Health System's clinic in East Pascagoula is closing permanently on July 31.

The MedWorks clinic opened in 2009. It provides basic X-rays, breath alcohol tests, drug testing, hearing tests and more.

Singing River spokesman Richard Lucas told The Sun Herald (http://bit.ly/1jWZlNj ) more information will be released Friday.

The closure comes on the heels of cost-cutting measures in May that included elimination of two administrative positions — chief operating officer of programs and head of information technology position.

At that time, Lucas called it a "regular restructuring," not a response to news earlier this year of shortfalls in revenue.

In March, health system officials reported that the Jackson County hospital system has $88 million in projected revenue it would not be able to collect.

A new audit firm with for the hospital system turned up the shortfall — $27 million from last year and $61 million from the previous five years.

Kevin Holland, new CEO for the county hospital system, said the money is an accumulation of unpaid patient bills that the hospital system had believed it could collect and now does not.

The hospital system is county-owned and the taxpayers of Jackson County co-sign the hospital's debt, but it is self-supporting and does not use tax dollars to operate.

The hospital system includes Pascagoula's Singing River Hospital, the Ocean Springs Hospital and various clinics in Jackson and George counties.