Canada Agrees with Iran’s Plan to Send Black Boxes of Downed Plane to France

“We think it is perfectly acceptable, in fact, it is a good idea to send those black boxes to France,” Canadian Transport Minister Marc Garneau said on Friday, according to Canadian media.

“We know that the BEA, which is an agency in France like our Transportation Safety Board, has the capability and the expertise to analyze these boxes and we are strongly encouraging Iran to move those boxes to Paris as quickly as possible,” he added.

Farhad Parvaresh, Iran’s representative on the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), said he told a council meeting of the organization this week that Iran didn’t fulfill that pledge to the boxes because COVID-19 suddenly shut down most of the world’s air routes and made travel difficult for all the parties that need to be there for the analysis.

He told The Canadian Press that Iran has now reached out to the French agency and asked it to accept the equipment directly, as soon as all the other countries affected by the crash can travel to France. That includes Canada, which under the agreed-upon rules governing international civilian plane crashes, can be a witness to the investigation because it had citizens aboard.

“When Iran receives the positive reply that technically it’s possible to have everybody there, I think Iran will take it out, to be read out,” Parvaresh said.

Carrying 167 passengers and nine crewmembers, Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 crashed outside Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport on January 8, moments following takeoff after being mistakenly identified by Iranian air defenses with an incoming cruise missile.

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic said on January 11 that the plane had flown close to a sensitive military site and been brought down due to human error “at a time of crisis caused by US adventurism.”