Bereaved families recalled the final memories of their loved ones on the anniversary of the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17.
Wednesday marks 10 years since the plane was shot down over eastern Ukraine while travelling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, killing all 298 people on board, including 38 Australian residents and citizens.
The plane was shot down by a missile while flying over conflict-ravaged eastern Ukraine, then in the hands of pro-Russian separatists.
A joint investigation into the shooting led by the Netherlands, Australia, Malaysia, Belgium and Ukraine concluded that the missile system was transported from Russia to an agricultural field near Pervomaiskyi in eastern Ukraine.
David Horder lost his parents, Susan and Howard, who were on board when the tragedy occurred.
They had spent a week with him in Europe before boarding the ill-fated flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, bound for their home in Brisbane.
Mr Horder texted his parents saying: “Have a safe flight… see you soon…”
‘Dad replied, “We’re about to board the boat… see you at the wedding of the year,” and Mom replied with something else,’ she said. A current issue.
Susan and Howard (pictured), who were on flight MH17 when it was shot down on 17 July 2014
Mr Horder thought he would see them at his brother’s wedding in Bali later that year, but he never saw them again.
“I could never have predicted how messy, dark and complicated it was going to be,” he said.
Mr Horder said he knew “instantly” that his parents were on that plane as soon as news broke that a plane had been shot down over eastern Ukraine by “a rogue missile”.
“I’d be lying if I said I was holding on to hope,” she told the show.
‘I turned on the TV and saw this dark column of smoke.
“The world changed completely.”
Mr Horder said that what followed were tears, confusion and questions, and an unlikely friendship with a detective who supported him through what he described as a “huge, complicated mess”.
Jack O’Brien’s parents, Meryn and Jon, were excited to see their son who had spent seven weeks backpacking around Europe.
The 25-year-old from western Sydney made a frantic dash through Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport just to catch his flight, which had been delayed by 13 minutes.
A decade later, his family is still haunted by the thought that their son might still be alive had he never boarded flight MH17.
Jack O’Brien almost missed his flight and his parents still wish he had.
Mr O’Brien recalled turning on the radio while making a cup of tea and hearing the shocking news that a Malaysia Airlines plane had crashed and there were no survivors.
He and his wife shared their story as part of a new five-part Australian Federal Police podcast, which launched this week.
“I think I immediately yelled, ‘That’s Jack’s plane,'” O’Brien recalled.
“That was the end of our life as we knew it.”
The couple watched CCTV footage of their son’s final moments and said it was “probably one of the most heartbreaking and unbearable things” to realise how close he came to missing the plane.
“The last take was this catwalk and there was no line because everyone had gone up and it was just an empty catwalk with Jack behind him running across that stage to get on the plane,” O’Brien said.
“I thought, ‘Why didn’t you fall? Why didn’t you break your leg or something?'”
In November 2022, the Hague District Court found Russian military and intelligence officers Igor Vsevolodovich Girkin and Sergey Nikolayevich Dubinskiy and pro-Russian Ukrainian Leonid Volodymyrovych Kharchenko guilty of shooting down the plane.
The Hague sentenced the men to life in prison, but the EU does not have an extradition treaty with Russia and the men remain at large, believed to be in Russia.
A fourth man, Russian Oleg Pulatov, was acquitted of all charges.
The crashed plane was shot down over eastern Ukraine by a “rogue missile”