Flying in the new age of conflict – the hotspots diverting flights and leaving pilots blind

The first indication that something was wrong came when the clock on the flight deck began to go backwards. The aircraft was cruising thousands of metres above Israel and as the crew noticed the error, they checked their GPS signal. The plane's internal instruments showed it was flying at just 1,500ft, well below the cruising altitude of 38,000ft it should have been at. Seconds later, alarms began to sound and lights flashed throughout the cockpit. "Our terrain avoidance system sprang into action, warning us that we were heading for a collision with the mountainous terrain," the plane's pilot says. Over…