The black boxes of the crashed Ukrainian plane are still in the Civil Aviation Organization (CAO) of Iran since foreign experts have postponed their travels to the country due to Coronavirus spread and thus, can not examine the boxes, said the head of Aircraft Accident Investigation Board in CAO.
“At the moment, as coronavirus spread across the world, the travels have been halted, so the black boxes’ information can not be downloaded and the work has stopped,” said Hassan Rezaei, Trend reports citing Fars News Agency.
“There have been correspondence with the other members of the Aircraft Accident Investigation Board that are related to the Ukrainian plane crash incident,” Rezaei added.
“Iran has invited representatives of eight countries to travel to a laboratory in Europe to start process of analyzing black boxes, but these countries have asked for postponing the inspections due to the coronavirus pandemic,” he said.
In turn, Canada’s Transportation Safety Board (TSB) Chairperson Kathy Fox also has announced the delay in analysis of the black boxes due to the coronavirus.
“The concerned countries to be involved in the analysis of the recorders provided a consistent response, indicating that travelling was impossible at this time,” said Fox.
“The representatives or experts from the involved countries should be present when the black boxes data is downloaded; therefore, the process should be postponed until conditions improve enough to allow for safe travel,” she added.
The Iranian military had admitted that the Ukrainian Boeing 737-800 was shot down due to human error on January 8 in Tehran, that killed 176 passengers and crew including 82 Iranians, 63 Canadians, 11 Ukrainians including all nine crew members, 10 Swedes, four Afghans, three Britons and three Germans.
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