The preliminary analysis of the data extracted from the two recorders of the Ukrainian International Airlines Flight PS752 confirmed an “illegal interference with the plane,” according to Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister Yevhenii Yenin.
“We are waiting for the Iranian side for the first round of talks next week,” Yenin said on Twitter. Among other issues, both parties have to solve legal issues regarding the compensation for victims’ relatives, as well as to Ukraine International Airlines for the loss of aircraft.
The work to extract and decipher the data was completed on July 23, 2020, Canada’s Transportation Safety Board (TSB) announced. It was carried out in Paris by the Iranian Air Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) with the assistance of the French Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA). “The work in Paris is finished, but the investigation is far from over. There are still many key questions that need to be answered,” Kathy Fox, the chair of the TSB, said in a statement. The data extraction was carried out in the presence of Ukraine International Airlines, Boeing, Safran, as well as other foreign aviation regulators representing the victims’ countries.
On January 8, 2020, Ukrainian International Airlines Boeing 737 crashed shortly after takeoff from Tehran International Airport, Iran, killing the 176 people on board. After a few days of denial, the Iranian authorities eventually admitted that the aircraft was shot down. An operator of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), stationed in Bid Kaneh, allegedly mistook the commercial flight for a cruise missile and fired two missiles from a Tor-M1 surface-to-air system.
In an interim report published on July 13, 2020, the Civil Aviation Organization of the Islamic Republic of Iran claimed a “human error” in setting up radar was the main cause that led the Flight PS752 to be shot down by the air defense system of Tehran. However, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said it was too early to make such a conclusion.