Canada: ICAO Rules on Ukrainian Plane Downing Are Ineffective and Need to Be Changed

Following the release of Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization’s report on the downing of Flight 752 by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a Canadian agency called on Thursday, March 19, for changes to international rules governing aviation accident investigations.

Kathy Fox, head of Canada’s Transportation Safety Board (TSB), told reporters at a press conference in Ottawa that the organization intends to enter negotiations with ICAO, the International Civil Aviation Organization, over the coming weeks and months on this matter.

Fox stated that while the international rules governing aviation accident investigation procedures known as “Annex 13” had proven effective prior to this incident, the investigation into the Ukrainian aircraft downing revealed that these rules face limitations.

According to Fox, under current ICAO regulations, overall authority to investigate and determine the causes of the aircraft downing has been delegated to the Islamic Republic, despite the fact that Iran’s armed forces played a role in firing on Flight PS 752.

Canada’s Transportation Safety Board chief emphasized that in rare cases where a government’s military is involved in downing a commercial passenger aircraft, new amendments to Annex 13 would provide for the presence of independent observers and delegations from involved countries to ensure greater transparency.

According to Fox, Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization’s final report on the downing of the Ukrainian passenger aircraft does not clarify the main causes of the incident.

She stated: “In our view, the final report released by Iran yesterday is incomplete and rather than answering ambiguities, it raises questions.”

The Ukrainian passenger aircraft was shot down on the morning of January 8, 2020, shortly after takeoff from Tehran International Airport when it was struck by two missiles fired by the Revolutionary Guard’s air defense system, killing all 176 people on board.

After several days of silence, Iran’s government finally acknowledged that Tehran’s air defense system fired on the Boeing aircraft, which was headed to Kyiv, due to “human error.”

In Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization’s final report released on March 18, it stated that the air defense system was on “high alert” due to severe tensions between Iran and the United States during those days.

Referencing complete investigations into the downing of a South Korean passenger aircraft by Russia and the downing of an Iranian passenger aircraft by the United States in the 1980s, Fox said: “The argument by responsible bodies in Iran that investigating the military aspects of the incident is impossible is unacceptable.”

She added: “Due to the lack of precise details in this report, we cannot confirm whether the new measures that responsible bodies in Iran have mentioned will actually reduce the danger to non-military aviation in that country’s airspace or not.”

In another part of her remarks, Kathy Fox emphasized that the Transportation Safety Board of Canada does not usually comment on other countries’ reports, but decided to speak out on this matter because “85 Canadian citizens lost their lives in the downing of the Ukrainian aircraft.”

Fox added that the Iranian government allowed experts from Canada’s Transportation Safety Board to participate in portions of the investigation but it was “much less than what we had requested.”

According to her, two inspectors from this agency visited the crash site during a six-day trip to Iran and met and spoke with Iranian inspectors.

One of the Transportation Safety Board of Canada’s inspectors also participated in the process of reading data from this aircraft’s black box, which took place in Paris in July.

Ukraine, which lost eleven of its citizens in the downing of Flight 752, described Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization’s report on Wednesday as “a desperate attempt to conceal the real reasons for the aircraft’s downing.”

Canada also stated that the report has not answered fundamental questions about the reasons for the aircraft downing and called for a “comprehensive and transparent” investigation in accordance with international standards.

Source: Radio Farda