An Iranian official announced on Saturday that Iran will send the black box flight recorders from the Ukrainian jetliner that it accidentally shot down last week to Ukraine for further analysis.
Hassan Rezaeifer, the head of accident investigations for the civil aviation department, said it was not possible to read the black boxes in Iran, without elaborating. He said French, American and Canadian experts would help analyze them in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.
Tansim-News has recorded Rezaeifer commenting, that if that doesn’t work the black boxes will be sent to France.
Further on the incident, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard accidentally shot the plane down shortly after it took off from Tehran on Jan. 8, killing all 176 people on board. Hours earlier, the Guard had launched ballistic missiles at U.S. troops in Iraq in response to the U.S. airstrike that killed Iran’s top commander, Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Officials say lower-level officers mistook the plane for a U.S. cruise missile.
According to Iranian officials; the crash resulted from a technical problem. They invited countries that lost citizens to help investigate.
However, three days later, Iran admitted responsibility after Western leaders declared that there was strong evidence the plane was hit by a surface-to-air missile.
Most of those killed in the crash were Iranians; the other included 57 Canadian citizens as well as 11 Ukrainians, 17 people from Sweden, four Afghans and four British citizens. The other five nations have demanded Iran to accept full responsibility and pay compensation to the victims’ families.
The plane was a Boeing 737-800 that was designed and built in the U.S. The plane’s engine was designed by CFM International, a joint company between French group Safran and U.S. group GE Aviation. Investigators from both countries have been invited to take part in the probe.
