Ukrainian aircraft crash: All you need to know

From a major Ukrainian Boeing plane crash to missile attacks and now earthquake, the last few days have been catastrophic for Iran. The tragic air crash took place in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, in Tehran. Here's more about the crash.

How the event unfolded

According to civil aviation spokesman Reza Jafarzadeh, Boeing 737-800 crashed five minutes after taking off in Tehran. The pilot couldn't contact the tower or even announce an emergency situation before the crash. The plane, which is operated by Ukrainian International Airlines started at 6.12 am from Imam Khomeini international airport on Wednesday and came down according to flight tracking websites. In a video released by ISNA, the plane was seen coming down burning in the sky. The crashed Ukrainian plane had 82 Iranians, 63 Canadians on board.

Boeing in deep trouble

The tragic tale of Boeing 737 air accidents began in 2018 when a Lion Air Boeing 737 Max crashed in Indonesia, killing 157 people on board. Troubles for Boeing  got worse when one of the worst air crashes in aviation history took place on March 10, 2019 where a Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft of Ethiopian Airlines lost control soon after takeoff and crashed near Addis Ababa. The accident claimed 157 lives.

Iran's mounting troubles

Iran had not come to terms with the death of Qasem Soleimani when this horrific air accident took place, with all 170 passengers on board dead. Cut to a week back. A 62-year-old powerful military commander General Qasem Soleimani was killed at Baghdad airport by a US airstrike in Iraq on January 3. He was seen as the second most powerful figure in Iran after Ayatollah Khamenei (Iran's Supreme Leader). The situation took a dangerous turn when Iran launched missiles at US-led forces in Iraq. The attack was in retaliation for the US drone strike which killed the Iranian commander. On January 8, a Boeing 737 jet crashed shortly after takeoff in Iran. The plane crash took place at 6:22 a.m. in the morning. Not only this, a 4.9-magnitude earthquake struck Iran near the Bushehr nuclear plant the same morning even as tensions in the Middle East soared following Iranian missile strikes on Iraqi bases housing US troops. Later in the day, an earthquake measuring 5.8 on the Richter scale struck Iran's Khorasan-e Razavi province near the border with Afghanistan.

Ukranian airline

Boeing 737-800 crash is the first fatal air accident for the Ukrainian airline. The airline has been awarded the IOSA-the IATA Operational Safety Audit certificate-which means, its operational and safety standards were fully up to international requirements. Founded in 1992, UIA (Ukraine International Airlines) did suffer from technical glitches in flights over the years but never crashed before, reported Reuters.

Plane crashes in Iran

Iran, in the year 2018-19, had witnessed many such fateful air accidents. One such event took place on February 18, 2018, at the Zagros Mountains in Iran where an Aseman Airlines plane, en route from Tehran to the south-western city of Yasuj, crashed near the city of Semirom in Isfahan province. Then, on January 14, 2019, a decade-old Iranian Boeing 707 military cargo crash landed west of Iran's capital. The accident took 15 lives, leaving a sole survivor. In a recent unfortunate plane crash, an Iranian Air Force's fighter jet crashed in the northwestern province of Ardabil on December 25, 2019.

The task for emergency services

According to Iranian media, the Ukrainian Boeing 737 that crashed in Iran did not declare an emergency. The comment for it came from Hassan Rezaeifar, the general director of the body's panel to investigate aircraft accidents. Commenting on the number of survivors, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said there were no survivors. The rescue team had a tough time looking through the debris."The fire is so heavy that we cannot (do) any rescue... we have 22 ambulances, four bus ambulances, and a helicopter at the site," Pirhossein Koulivand, head of Iran's emergency services, told Iranian state television.