Ukraine International Airlines Demands Full Investigation into Iran 737 Shootdown

Ukraine International Airlines executives held a press conference to address Iran’s culpability in the shootdown of Flight PS752.

Ukrainian Airlines Flight PS752 was shot down by Iranian air defense missiles soon after takeoff from Tehran on Jan. 8, 2020. (Image: FlightRadar24)

By Reuben F. Johnson

January 11, 2020

Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) has demanded that the Iranian government fully explain how its Revolutionary Guard Aerospace Force shot down its Boeing 737-800 aircraft on January 8, killing all 176 passengers and crew on board. At a Saturday morning press conference in Kyiv, held a few hours after Iran admitted responsibility for the attack, the airline stated that Flight PS752 had not deviated from its assigned flight path and that its pilots had been in contact with air traffic controllers until just before the aircraft was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile.

Iran’s admission of responsibility came just a day after officials had insisted it was “scientifically impossible” for the aircraft to have been shot down and that technical failures on the 737 were to blame for the accident. However, on Saturday, Brigadier-General Amir-Ali Hajizadehh, head of the Revolutionary Guard’s Aerospace Force, indicated that before the shoot-down, his personnel had asked for commercial flights in Iran to be suspended and that this had been refused by both Iran’s military leaders and the country’s civil aviation authorities.

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