Canada to help download ‘black boxes’ of downed UIA plane
"The Transportation Safety Board was informed that the download of the PS752 recorders will take place at the French Bureau d’Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la sécurité de l’aviation civile (BEA) in Paris, during the week of 20 July 2020. The Transportation Safety Board has been invited to participate in the download of the recorders and will deploy a team of investigators who specialize in aircraft recorder download and analysis," reads the statement of the Transportation Safety Board of Canada.
As noted, all necessary health precautions will be taken to ensure safe travel for the investigators.
The Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) plane (flight PS752) heading from Tehran to Kyiv crashed shortly after it took off from the Imam Khomeini International Airport at about 06:00 Tehran time (04:30 Kyiv time) on January 8. There were 176 people on board – nine crew members (all Ukrainians) and 167 passengers (citizens of Ukraine, Iran, Canada, Sweden, Afghanistan, Germany, and the UK). They all died.
On January 11, Iran admitted that its military had accidentally shot down the Ukrainian passenger jet. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) accepted full responsibility for the downing of the Ukrainian airliner. It emerged later that the UIA plane had been shot down by two missiles of the Tor-M1 air defense system, which Iran received from Russia.
The International Coordination and Response Group for the Victims of Flight PS752 Crash has insisted on the transfer of flight recorders to France which has the necessary technical capabilities for decoding them.
Iran's official in the International Civil Aviation Organization agreed in March to hand over the black box flight recorders to France or Ukraine for analysis, but this has not been done so far.
On June 21, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that Ukraine would be forced to file lawsuits against Iran at international courts if the country's authorities failed to fulfill their obligations regarding the UIA plane shot down near Tehran.
However, at the ICAO Council meeting on June 26, the Iranian representatives again agreed to send flight recorders to France for download and analysis but this time undertook to do this by July 20.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada is an independent agency that investigates air, marine, pipeline, and rail transportation occurrences. Its sole aim is the advancement of transportation safety. It is not the function of the Board to assign fault or determine civil or criminal liability.
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