Ukraine Airline Crash in Iran Prompts Conflicting Statements

“Planes just don’t blow up in midair,” said Richard Aboulafia, vice president for analysis at Teal Group, an aviation consulting firm. “It doesn’t work like that.”

After an accident, the “black boxes,” or flight data recorders, are often sent to the plane’s maker for analysis, but the head of Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization, Ali Abedzadeh, told the semiofficial Mehr News Agency that Iran would not send the recorders from the Ukraine International Airlines flight to Boeing, an American company.

“We will not give the black box to the manufacturer and the Americans,” Mehr quoted him as saying. Ukrainian officials, he said, would be involved in Iran’s investigation of the crash.

Michael Huerta, a former administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, said the fact that the crash happened in Iran would complicate the investigation. Normally, the country where a crash occurs leads the investigation, and includes officials from the country where the plane was produced, in this case the United States.

“In global aviation we would like to think that the technical experts will rule the day, but given that it’s Iran, we’ll have to wait and see,” Mr. Huerta said.

The N.T.S.B., which often takes part in aviation accident investigations in other parts of the world, “is working with the State Department and other agencies to determine the best course of action,” said Christopher O’Neil, a spokesman.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/world/middleeast/iran-plane-crash-boeing-ukraine.html?emc=rss&partner=rss