Meanwhile, the probe into the crash was underway with Iran pointing to a
possible aircraft malfunction and Ukraine apparently leaving open other
paths of inquiry.
At least one U.S.-based aviation expert said it appeared the plane was
"not intact" before it hit the ground. And a former Federal Aviation
Administration accident investigation chief, Jeff Guzzetti, said the
crash carried "all the earmarks of an intentional act."
"I just know airplanes don't come apart like that," Guzzetti said.
The Ukraine International Airlines flight, bound for the Ukrainian
capital, Kyiv, went down just before dawn after departing from Imam
Khomeini International Airport, south of Tehran. The plane was
approaching 8,000 feet when it abruptly lost contact with ground
control, officials said.
About four hours earlier, Iranian forces launched more than a dozen
ballistic missiles into Iraq, targeting an Iraqi air base with U.S.
personnel in response to an American airstrike last week that killed the
commander of Iran's elite Quds Force, Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani.
American passenger airliners and others have avoided flying over Iran
because of the risk that they could be mistaken for military aircraft.
Iranian authorities said "technical" problems were likely behind the
crash of the Ukrainian Boeing 737-800.
Ukraine's Embassy in Tehran initially concurred, issuing a statement
ruling out terrorism and suggesting likely engine failure. It later took
down the statement without explanation, raising questions about whether
different scenarios — including an "external" cause such as a missile —
were being explored as potential reasons for the crash.
But Iranian officials pushed back again that theory. Gen. Abolfazl
Shekarchi, an Iranian armed forces spokesman, said "rumors" that a
missile brought down the plane were "completely false."
He was quoted by Iran’s Fars news agency as calling the missile
speculation “psychological warfare” by the government’s opponents.
The Ukrainian Embassy said a commission was investigating the crash and
that "any statements about the causes of the accident before the
decision of the commission are not official."
A video circulated on Twitter
that purported to be of the crash and showed the plane as a bright
light, possibly on fire, descending against a dark sky, followed by a
burst of flames.
Guzzetti, the retired head of the FAA’s accident investigation division,
said the details of the crash publicly available suggested the plane
was brought down deliberately.
“To me it has all the earmarks of an intentional act. I don’t know
whether it was a bomb or a missile or an incendiary device,” he said.
If the video of the flaming plane is accurate, “I can’t conceive of a
failure that could cause that much of a conflagration,” he said.
An engine fire, for example, would take a substantial period “to consume
the airplane,” said Guzzetti, who was an air safety investigator and
engineering specialist at the National Transportation Safety Board for
18 years before joining the FAA.
The abrupt cutoff of flight-tracking data emitting from the plane also
indicated that it was “a sudden catastrophic event that created a power
loss throughout the whole airplane,” he said.
