Page 46 - IRANRptAug20

Iran finally hands over black boxes of downed UIA PS752 flight to French experts
EU aviation agency issues warning to avoid Iranian airspace
Iran’s airlines expected to clock up COVID-19 losses of IRR30 trillion
The suspension began on July 18. Turkey’s land border crossings with Iran are closed to passenger traffic, but not to trade vehicles.
Iran is suffering a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic. At one point, Turkey became the worst-hit country in the Middle East in terms of COVID-19 as the first wave of infections eased off in Iran, but the second wave has once more put Iran in the unwanted number one spot.
Iran has handed over to French experts the black box flight recorders recovered from the wreckage of the Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) flight PS752 aircraft shot out of the sky with missiles after it took off from Tehran in early January, with the loss of 176 lives. ​The Iranians have previously been accused by relatives of some of those killed of being guilty of unconscionable delays in transferring the equipment for assessment of recorded data.
French aviation officials at the Bureau for Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) confirmed the receipt of the shipped flight recorders. "The black boxes were transferred to Paris yesterday by aviation officials and a judge, and their deciphering will start on Monday [July 20]," Foreign Ministry official Mohsen Baharvand was quoted as telling ​Etemad​ newspaper on July 18.
Iran’s Civil Aviation ​Organisation has said that a misaligned missile battery​, miscommunication and a poor chain of command were the cause of the downing of the PS752 flight from Tehran to Kyiv.
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has issued a warning for civil aircraft regarding the danger of flights in Iranian airspace.
The shooting down of the Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) flight PS752 in early January forced many regional airlines to avoid Iranian airspace, cutting out one of the biggest multidirectional airspace routes in the world overnight. “Due to the hazardous security situation, and poor co-ordination between civil aviation and military operations, there is a risk of misidentification of civil aircraft. Due to the presence of various advanced air-defence systems, it is advised to be cautious with the risk associated to civil aviation,” EASA said in its bulletin.
According to the bulletin, the risk is assessed to be high at altitudes below 4.7 miles. The warning is valid until January 16.
On January 8, the Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737-800 was downed shortly after takeoff from Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport, killing all 176 people on board.
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 grounded fleets due to the scrapping of domestic and international flights made necessary by efforts introduced by Iran and other countries in the battle against the pandemic.
“The number of air passengers reduced by 76% and flights by 90% during Nowruz [the Persian New Year] holidays [which ran from March 19-April 3],
46​ IRAN Country Report August 2020 www.intellinews.com