The crash of the Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) Boeing 737 NG shortly after taking off from Tehran left 179 people dead, according to an upwardly revised report. Iran refuses to send the two black boxes to the United States, which should normally participate in the investigation since a Boeing is involved.





The Ukrainian national Airline Boeing 737-800 on flight PS752 between Tehran-Imam Khomeini Airport and its base in Kyiv-Boryspil had taken off shortly after 6:00 a.m. on January 8, 2020, about an hour late. He crashed a few minutes after leaving in a field fifteen kilometers from the airport, killing all 179 passengers (the youngest of whom was born in 2018) and crew members; debris from the aircraft was scattered over about 300 meters. Ukraine International Airlines has updated the casualty list, which lists the presence on board of 11 Ukrainians (including nine crew members), 82 Iranians, 63 Canadians, 10 Swedes, seven Afghans and three British. According to the Prime Minister of Canada, 138 of the passengers were to transfer from Kyiv to Toronto; of the victims, 27 were from Edmonton. According to some sources, two « non-Ukrainian » passengers did not show up for boarding.









The airline expressed « its deepest condolences to the families of the victims of the air crash, and will do everything possible to support the relatives of the victims. » She provided details of the crew, made up of three pilots: the captain Volodymyr Gaponenko (11,600 hours of flight over 737, including 5,500 as captain), the instructor pilot Oleksiy Naumkin (12,000 hours of flight over 737, including 6,600 as captain), and co-pilot Serhii Khomenko (7,600 flight hours out of 737). At a press conference in Kyiv, VP Operations of Ukraine International Airlines Igor Sosnovsky declared that a piloting error was « improbable: we know that the plane had reached an altitude of 7874 feet (…), and given the experience of the pilots, it is very difficult to say that the accident could be related to them ”. He said Tehran airport was « anything but simple » for pilots, and that the UIA had used it « for years » to assess its flight crew, including in the event of an emergency.