re: #410 b_sharp

What word would you substitute for crash?

Disaster? Crime? Horror? Attack?

The job of an editor is to reduce verbiage and make sure the concept being conveyed is clear. Dropping crash doesn’t diminish the point being conveyed.

Substituting incident for crash conveys that we don’t know all the facts/circumstances. Crash indicates how the flight eventually ended.

Alternatively, commas added thusly would convey things much more clearly:

Dutch military plane, carrying victims from Malaysian Air Flt. 17 crash, landed in Netherlands.

I’d probably have written it as: Dutch military plane, carrying victims from Malaysian Air Flt. 17 incident, landed in Netherlands.