Hong Kong-Bound Flight Saw North Korean ICBM, Tillerson Says

• January 16 2018
• Nick Wadhams

A North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile launch in November was witnessed by passengers on a San Francisco-to-Hong Kong commercial flight.

A North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile launch in November was witnessed by passengers on a San Francisco-to-Hong Kong commercial flight, highlighting the “recklessness” of Kim Jong Un’s regime, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said.

“According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the flight was 280 nautical miles from point of impact, and at the time there were nine other flights within that range,” Tillerson said Tuesday in Vancouver, where he’s pressing officials from allied nations to tighten sanctions on Pyongyang. “Over the course of that day, according to the Department of Defense, an estimated 716 flights were due to pass within that same range.”

Tillerson didn’t say which airline the passengers were on when they saw “parts of a North Korean ICBM test flying through the sky” on Nov. 28, or whether the plane changed its route as a result.

The launch flew for 53 minutes on a lofted trajectory and may have reached an altitude of more than 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles) before landing in waters about 250 kilometers from Japan’s northwest coast, Japanese officials said at the time. U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis said that it flew higher than any previous North Korean launch.

“My point is this: North Korea’s willingness to launch missiles at any time presents a threat to people of all nationalities in the region’s airspace each day,” Tillerson said Tuesday, adding that the threat to commercial aviation is not the “likeliest” threat posed by the regime’s weapons program.

Nevertheless, “based on its past recklessness, we cannot expect North Korea to have any regard for what might get in the way of one of its missiles, or parts of a missile breaking apart.”