The Malaysia Airlines flight shot down over eastern Ukraine on Thursday while it was flying to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam is the 9th commercial jet to be brought down in Russian airspace since 1940.

In one of the earliest incidents, Korean Air Lines flight 902, headed from Paris to Seoul with a stopover in Anchorage, took a sharp detour while passing through the North Pole and headed southwest toward Murmansk on April 20, 1978.

While flying through the Soviet airspace, an Su-17 jet fired two missiles at the Boeing 707 forcing it to make an emergency landing on a frozen lake. Two of the 107 passengers onboard were killed.

Another Korean Air Lines plane, flight 007, was shot down by a Soviet fighter on September 1, 1983, when it strayed off course into Soviet airspace near Moneron Island while flying on autopilot from Anchorage to Seoul. The commercial jet was brought down after getting hit with an R-8 missile. All 269 passengers and crew onboard the flight were killed.

Five years later, on July 3, 1988, the U.S. Navy shot down an Iranian airliner flying across the Persian Gulf that it mistakened for an F-14. All 290 aboard died in what should have been a 28-minute flight between the Iranian coast city of Bandar Abbas and Dubai.

Most recently, a Siberian flight headed from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk, Russia was shot down over the Black Sea by an s-200 surface-to-air missile fired from the Crimea peninsula in Ukraine during a military exercise. All 78 onboard were killed.

In the recent days, Russian separatists have reportedly brought down four Ukrainian planes near the city of Donetsk. Many airlines changed their routes to keep their flights away from Ukraine following Thursday's incident.