Page 48 - IRANRptSep20

Thousands of models are stuck in ports and yards around the country. Some have remained frozen in situ for at least two years.
9.1.3 ​Aviation sector news
Iran says black box details of shot down Ukrainian airliner indicates those aboard were alive before second missile strike
Iran’s airlines expected to clock up COVID-19 losses of IRR30 trillion
A black box flight recorder recovered from the Ukrainian International Airlines (UIA) passenger jet mistakenly shot down by Iran in early January captured a conversation in the cockpit moments after a missile strike that indicated the pilots and passengers on the Boeing 737 were alive before a second missile hit 25 seconds later, Iran's aviation authority said on August 23.
The information tallies with a ​report ​bne IntelliNews​ drew attention to in May in which Ukrainian forensics head Alexander Ruvin from the Kyiv Research Institute of Forensics suggested from evidence obtained that passengers on UIA flight PS752 were out of their seats before two missiles hit the plane outside Tehran. All 176 people on board the aircraft were killed.
In releasing the black box details, Iranian officials urged that the information not be politicised.
After initially denying any responsibility for the plane crashing to the ground in a fireball, Iran admitted it shot the flight down "unintentionally", calling it a "disastrous mistake" by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Iran's air defences had been on high alert at the time. Hours earlier, the country had fired ballistic missiles at two bases in Iraq used by US troops in retaliation for the assassination of top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike at Baghdad airport.
During a press conference, Capt Zanganeh, head of the Civil Aviation Organisation of Iran (CAOI), said "up to 19 seconds" of conversation between two pilots and a pilot instructor had been captured in the aircraft's cabin after the first missile struck.
It was "25 seconds later that the second missile hit the plane", he said, adding: "They were piloting the plane until the last moment."
He said other black box information indicated that the aircraft had been "in a normal flight corridor" before the first missile exploded, sending shrapnel into the aircraft.
Capt Zanganeh added: "At this moment, the plane has an electrical problem and the auxiliary power of the plane is turned on at the order of the pilot instructor. Both engines were on in the seconds after the explosion.
An earlier report by the CAOI said the air defence unit that targeted the plane had recently moved position and failed to calibrate its equipment correctly. Consequently, it misidentified the civilian plane as a hostile object.
The report also said the missile battery was unable to communicate with their command centre. It then fired on the plane without receiving official approval. Iran delayed releasing the plane's "black box" voice recorder. However, in July sent it to France for examination by top experts.
Iranian airlines are set to record losses of around Iranian rial (IRR) 30 trillion ($183mn at the free market rate, $714mn at the government rate) up to April 3 due to shutdowns caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic​, Fars News Agency has reported the Iranian Association of Airlines as estimating.
The carriers were already haemorrhaging losses due to ongoing heavy US sanctions throttling operations.
Secretary of the Iranian Association of Airlines Masoud Asadi-Samani was cited as saying that there were presently three airlines in Iran with entirely
48​ IRAN Country Report September 2020 www.intellinews.com