Monitoring the Situation
"We continue to monitor the situation and will not engage in speculation."
"We are confident in the safety of our fleet [of about 400 Boing 737 daily departures of its 48 737-800 aircraft]."
Morgan Bell, WestJet spokesperson
"Even a catastrophic engine failure would be highly unlikely to have such a dramatic effect on control of the aircraft."
"A 737 is capable of flying safely on just one of its two engines."
David Learmount, consulting editor, FlightGlobal
"[The crash] that killed numerous Iranians, including a group of students, as well as other nationalities, deeply saddens all Iranians."
"May they rest in peace."
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani
"Canadians have questions and they deserve answers."
"I want to express my deepest condolences to those who are mourning the loss of a loved one. Your loss is indescribable and this is a heartbreaking tragedy."
"While no words will erase your pain, I want you to know that an entire country is with you."
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
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Flight PS752 departed Imam Khomeini International Airport at 6:20 a.m. Wednesday, close to an hour later than scheduled. And then it disappeared from radar a mere few minutes following takeoff. It reached 8,000 ft. in altitude according to data from FlightRadar24, the flight-tracking website. And the unspeakable tragedy of a plane engulfed in fire, plummeting to the ground, crashing and the stunning conclusion of 176 passengers and crew immolated and shattered.
According to Iranian authorities, the most likely cause of this ghastly scenario was an engine that caught fire. The response by Ukraine Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk was for Ukrainian prosecutors to open a criminal probe. He refused to rule out the possibility that the plane might have been hit by a missile, but cautioning against early speculation. A team of aviation experts was dispatched to Iran to begin the crash investigation, revealed Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
The Ukrainian Airlines Boeing 737-800 passenger jet just happened to crash the very night Iran sent off a dozens missiles to hit bases in Iraq housing American troops to retaliate for the U.S.drone strike that destroyed Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani. There was a crew of nine and a total of 176 people aboard the passenger liner. All died within minutes of takeoff from Tehran International Airport. An Canadian Iranian who just saw his wife off on her return to Canada discovered while still in the terminal that he would never see her again.
Most of the Boeing 737-800 flight passengers were headed for Canada, including Canadian citizens and Iranians returning to Canada on study and other visas. The victims were not all Canadians and Iranians, however, seven other countries are now mourning the untimely deaths of their nationals; 82 Iranians, 63 Canadians, 11 Ukrainians, 10 Swedes, four Afghans, three Germans, three British nationals. But fully 138 of those passengers were headed for Canada.
Hours later, a Ukrainian airlines plane landed at Pearson airport in Toronto from Kyiv, representing the scheduled second tranche of the journey undertaken by those who boarded the passenger jet in Tehran to fly to Kyiv. The passengers booked to connect to the second leg of their journey from Kyiv to Toronto, would never again meet any schedules, their ghostly non-presence making for a large vacancy rate on that plane. Canadian citizens of Iranian descent, visitors, landed immigrants, students, all perished.
A video widely circulating online shows Flight PS752 ascending, then bursting into a ball of flame and hurtling groundward in the dark sky. When the plane hit the ground, countless little fires broke off to burn brightly across a wide area. Hours later when daylight struck, debris strewn across the scorched area was still smouldering on a soccer field, a drainage ditch and road. Rescue workers in masks hopelessly searched for survivors, ending up placing human remains in green, black and tan body bags.
Three and a half hours after Iran had launched 22 missiles at military bases in Iraq, the Ukrainian airliner mysteriously 'caught fire' and crashed, and 176 innocent people lost their lives. "Our priority is to establish the truth and those responsible for this terrible catastrophe", said Ukraine's President Zelenskiy. No mayday transmission from the pilots, just a plane completely engulfed in fire, and then the crash.
Interpreting the signals in the two black boxes will quickly establish cause. Ali Abedzadeh, head of the Iran Civil Aviation Organization stated the black boxes would remain in Iran's possession, not to be turned over as is regular practise to the U.S. manufacturer of the aircraft for study on the movement of the plane and its instruments and communications where the pilots' actions and conversations would settle the question of what exactly occurred.
"It was one of our best planes with an excellent, trustworthy crew" explained the airline's president, Yevhen Dykhne. Aviation officials from Ukraine and Iran together with Boeing representatives and aviation organizations have promised a thorough investigation. Some aviation experts see a problem in an engine fire that could presumably consume and down an aircraft so rapidly.
Photos of the wreckage shared on the Internet show holes in the plane many suspect were a result of gunfire.
"The rumours about the plane are completely false and no military or political expert has confirmed it", General Abolfazi Shekarchi stated for the Iranian armed forces. "We lost contact with it [the plane], suggesting that something very unusual happened", commented Canada's Marc Garneau a former astronaut, and now Canada's Transport Minister. And lo and behold something very unusual certainly did occur.
There is now general concurrence that Iran 'mistakenly' shot a ground-to-air missile that hit the plane, set it instantly afire, killing all aboard. Echoes of other, previous 'mistakes'.
Labels: Air Tragedy, Canadian-Iranians, Conflict, Iran, Ukraine Airlines, United States
posted by Pieface @ Friday, January 10, 2020
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