MONTREAL -- An aviation expert said Iran’s admission that they shot down a passenger jet, killing all 176 people on board raises more questions about the incident.
Iman Sadeghzadeh said he believes increased tension between Iran and the United States likely played a role in incident. He noted the incident happened the same night that Iran launched several cruise missiles at American military bases in Iraq, a response to the killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani on Jan. 3.
On Saturday Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said an Iranian missile had been fired and hit the plane on Wednesday, but that the missile was fired due to human error.
“There’s a missile base not far from that airport and they were on high alert. Those guys probably were stressed and under a lot of pressure and they made a mistake. But what I’ve heard about that mistake, I’m still not convinced,” said Sadeghzadeh. “They’re saying they thought it was a cruise missile and the operator of that missile system had only 10 seconds to respond to not shoot or to shoot and unfortunately he decided to shoot.
“What I don’t understand is we have something called a Temporary Flight Restriction. When something like this happens they put TFRs around airports to make sure airliners don’t pass the TFRs. I think miscommunication was another big factor. (The pilots) were likely not informed of the TFRs around the airspace.”
Sadeghzadeh said he also had questions about Iranian claims that they believed plane was a cruise missile.
“A cruise missile has a speed of Mach 1 all the way to four or five Machs. But an airliner like a 737, at that altitude is flying at 250 knots, more or less. The radar cross-section of a missile, which is very slim and flying at a high speed, is very different from an airliner.”
Sadeghzadeh said he couldn’t conclude that the flight was shot down on purpose but that he “can’t believe they made a mistake and were thinking it was a missile. That cannot happen.”
Many of those onboard Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752, which was taking off from Tehran towards Kiev, were ultimately heading to Canada. Among the victims were at least 10 people were Quebecers. Sadeghzadeh said he knew several of the people onboard and that the incident comes as “a shock.”
“Our Persian community is not very large, we all knew each other, especially those people who are in the aerospace industry or studying in graduate positions in different universities in Montreal,” he said. “It’s very sad, we lost a lot of talented people.”
