SAF Safran SA

By Aresu Eqbali in Tehran, Rory Jones in Dubai and Georgi Kantchev in Moscow 

The investigation into what caused a Ukraine International Airlines jetliner to crash shortly after takeoff on Wednesday, killing all 176 passengers and crew members on board, faces complications amid tensions between the U.S. and Iran.

Determining what went wrong is critical to the maker of the 737-800 single-aisle jet, Boeing Co., which already is dealing with the grounding of its best-selling MAX fleet following two other fatal jet crashes.

Boeing said it was in contact with Ukraine International Airlines and was ready to assist in any way. CFM International, a joint venture of General Electric Co. and France's Safran SA that makes the engine for the 737-800, said it was saddened by the incident and "any speculation regarding the cause is premature."

In a typical crash probe, Boeing, GE and the U.S. transportation-accident investigation agency would gain access to the site. Based on international convention, investigators usually allow the home country of the airline and the makers of the plane and its major systems to participate in crash probes. That could prove difficult after Iran threatened to target Americans and launched missile strikes in retaliation for the targeted U.S. killing of an Iranian general.

Iranian investigators have found the plane's black box and it will be analyzed by the Iran Civil Aviation Organization, said Ali Abedzadeh, the agency's chief, state-run IRNA news agency reported. Depending on the technology required to analyze the box, it could be sent to another country, he said.

But in a sign that politics could impede the probe, Mr. Abedzadeh also told the semiofficial Mehr News Agency that his organization wouldn't provide Boeing or the U.S. access to the black box. Local officials told IRNA that the plane's connection to the control tower was lost immediately after takeoff and the pilot also didn't contact air-traffic control about an emergency.

The U.S. said it was following the incident closely, was prepared to offer Ukraine assistance and called for complete cooperation with any investigation into the cause of the crash, as mandated by international treaties.

Data transmitted via satellite during the brief flight offered some preliminary information about conditions on board the jetliner. It indicated that everything was normal on the jetliner until the sudden loss of data and the fatal dive, a U.S. official familiar with the matter said.

That data suggest to some U.S. air-safety officials that there may have been some sort of hostile act, the person said, who cautioned that it was too early to draw any conclusions.

Iran's state news agency reported the crash resulted from an engine fire caused by a technical fault, but didn't explain how that conclusion was reached. Typically, finding the reason for a crash has taken months or even years.

At least 16 children below the age of 10 were on board, according to a passenger list the airline released. While most passengers were Iranian, there were also Canadians and Ukrainians on board, as well as citizens of Britain, Germany and Sweden.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada said there were at least 63 Canadians on board, and a total of 138 passengers were destined for Toronto. "Canadians have questions and they deserve answers," he said at a news conference in Ottawa, adding that foreign officials would press Tehran and work with allies to ensure the crash is thoroughly investigated.

When asked whether he could categorically say the plane wasn't shot down, Mr. Trudeau replied, "I cannot." Transport Minister Marc Garneau of Canada said: "Something very unusual happened, but we can't speculate at this point."

A group of 45 Ukrainian experts and officials flew to Tehran to take part in the investigation, said Oleksiy Danilov, the head of the country's National Security and Defense Council. The team will work to identify bodies and the circumstances of the incident, news agency Interfax Ukraine reported.

Ukrainian security officials expect the investigation to take time, with no conclusions reached yet, a person familiar with the matter said.

Ukraine International Airlines said the Boeing aircraft was manufactured in 2016 and underwent its last scheduled maintenance on Monday. The airline said it was working with aviation authorities to determine what happened and had suspended flights to Tehran indefinitely.

The airline said the aircraft was one of its best, and that it hadn't received any safety alerts before the flight, but that the jet disappeared from radar screens minutes after taking off.

It also said the flight crew included three pilots -- the 737 usually has a two-person flight crew -- with extensive experience with the aircraft and knowledge of operating at Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport, given the airline uses it for training on the 737. The captain, Volodymyr Gaponenko, had 11,600 hours on the Boeing 737, the airline said.

"According to our records, the aircraft ascended as high as 2,400 meters [7,900 feet]," said Ihor Sosnovsky, the airline's vice president of operations. "Given the crew's experience, error probability is minimal. We do not even consider such a chance."

Reaching that altitude in about 2 1/2 minutes would indicate a normal climb away from the field, suggesting engines were operating normally, at least until a point.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine offered his condolences and said the country will test the airworthiness of its entire fleet of civilian aircraft.

"Our priority is to establish the truth and those responsible for this terrible catastrophe," he said.

Ukraine International Airlines, founded in 1992 following the collapse of the Soviet Union, is the country's flag carrier and largest airline. It has a fleet of 42 jets, most of them modern, Western-built jetliners that are owned or rented from aircraft lessors. Planes operated by the airline haven't crashed before.

Iran, meanwhile, has a relatively poor air-safety record. Its airlines and infrastructure have been hobbled by sanctions that led to shortages of spare parts and the cancellation of $40 billion in new aircraft from Boeing and Airbus SE becaus eof U.S. sanctions.

For Boeing, the crash adds to problems with the global grounding of its newer-version 737 MAX aircraft following two fatal accidents. The Ukrainian 737 is an earlier model and doesn't have the flight-control feature that was implicated in crashes last year and led to the MAX fleet being grounded globally.

The 737-800 is the most-popular version of the aerospace giant's workhorse jet, with the roughly 5,000 produced since it entered service in 1998 enjoying one of the industry's best safety records.

Seating between 160 and 190 passengers, the aircraft is operated by hundreds of carriers and alongside a smaller and larger variant accounts for around 25% of all commercial jetliners in operation.

The aircraft, and its variants, has a world-wide accident rate of roughly one fatal crash per 10 million departures, according to Boeing accident statistics. That is much lower than the overall global rate for all Western-built jets, and significantly below the historic fatal accident rate for other Boeing workhorse models such as the 767 and 747-400 wide-body jets.

The Ukrainian International crash is the eighth fatal accident involving the 737-800, according to Aviation Safety Network, an independent flight-safety group that tracks accident and incident statistics. The latest fatal crash was in 2018 involving an Air Niugini jet in Micronesia.

Pilot error was determined to be the probable cause in all but one of the accidents, said Harro Ranter, head of the Aviation Safety Network.

The only fatality stemming from a mechanical or other system failure, he said, occurred in April 2017 when an internal part of a Southwest Airlines Co. engine broke off violently and ended up killing a single passenger in the cabin.

The aviation industry is grappling with the heightened tensions between Iran and the U.S., with the Middle East one of the world's busiest flight corridors for services between Europe and Asia.

Iran early Wednesday launched strikes against two bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq, attacks it said were retribution for the U.S. killing of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani last week.

After the strikes, Dubai-based carriers Emirates Airline and Flydubai canceled flights to and from the Iraqi capital Baghdad. That followed Bahrain-based Gulf Air, Saudi Arabia's Flynas and Royal Jordanian Airlines, which all canceled flights to and from Baghdad on Friday.

The FAA is prohibiting U.S. carriers from traveling in airspace over Iran, Iraq and the Persian Gulf, while the European Aviation Safety Agency has recommended that airlines avoid Iraqi airspace as a precaution.

Some international airlines, including Air France-KLM SA and Qantas Airways Ltd., have said they would avoid airspace over Iraq and Iran, while Lufthansa canceled Wednesday's flight from Frankfurt to Tehran and said it was evaluating when the service could be resumed.

Kim Mackrael, Andy Pasztor, Ben Otto, Doug Cameron and Paul Vieira contributed to this article.

Write to Rory Jones at rory.jones@wsj.com and Georgi Kantchev at georgi.kantchev@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 08, 2020 19:59 ET (00:59 GMT)

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