Airlines are coming under increasing scrutiny for continuing to fly in Iran after a ******* barrage and warnings by U.S. safety regulators about the dangerous conditions.
American, British and Canadian officials said Thursday it is “highly likely” that Iran shot down a Ukrainian airliner near Tehran this week, possibly by ********, during a time of high political tension in the region.
About 2 1/2 hours before the ******* International Airlines *** with 176 people on board took off, the Federal Aviation Administration issued ********* orders prohibiting American pilots and airlines from flying over Iran, the Persian Gulf or the Gulf of Oman.
The notices warned that heightened military activity and political tension in the *********** posed “an inadvertent risk” to U.S. aircraft “due to the potential for miscalculation or mis-identification.”
Foreign airlines aren’t bound by FAA directives, but they often follow them. In this case, however, several large international carriers — including Lufthansa, ******* Airlines, Qatar Airways and Aeroflot — continued to fly in and out of Tehran after Iran ***** missiles at military bases inside Iraq that house U.S. troops. They still were flying after the FAA warning, and after the Ukrainian jetliner crashed, according to data from Flightradar24, which tracks flights around the *****.
“It was awfully peculiar and awfully risky,” said Peter Goelz, a former managing director of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. “That’s a theatre of *** and these guys were acting like there was nothing going on.”
Goelz said airlines should have cancelled all flights when Iran ***** the missiles. Those ******* occurred the night before the Ukrainian plane was scheduled to leave Tehran.
After the FAA notices, 12 airliners took off or landed without ******** early Wednesday at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport, according to data from Flightradar24. ******* International Airlines flight 752 was No. 13.
By late Thursday, some major airlines had changed their thinking. A Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Tehran turned back over Romania and headed back toward Germany. Austrian Airlines said on Twitter that “due to the latest reports and the changed assessment of the security situation for the airspace around Tehran airport,” it cancelled a flight Thursday and another Friday. ******* Airlines temporarily halted flights to Iran and Iraq.
Some safety experts defended the airlines and said that if turns out the Ukrainian plane was shot down, even by ********, the blame rests entirely with Iran. Under international agreements, countries are obligated to monitor their own airspace and tell operators about changes in safety conditions. The governments are expected to know more than airlines, especially those from other countries, as was the case in the loss of the ******* International Airlines plane.
“I don’t think you can fault the *******,” said John Cox, a former ******* pilot and now a safety consultant. “Iran could have shut their airspace down if they believed there was a ******.”
Airliners rarely get hit by missiles, although the ****** has existed for many years. Aviation-security experts worry about portable, shoulder-carried ******* that could be used against planes as they take off or land — when they are closest to the ground.
It takes more sophisticated ******* to threaten jets at cruising altitude. That, however, is exactly what happened to ***************** *********, which was brought down by a Russian-made *** ******* in July 2014 as it flew about 33,000 feet over *******, on the way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. All 298 people on board ****.
In that ******** and the 1988 ******* of an Iranian airliner by a ******* ***** from the U.S. Navy cruiser USS Vincennes -— ******* all 290 people on the plane — it appeared that combatants ***** their ******* before they were certain whether the target was a military plane or a civilian one, Cox said.
This week’s ***** in Iran “is a needless tragedy, but it doesn’t change my view of the safety of aviation,” Cox said.
Goelz said, however, that airlines need to be more stringent in tracking combat zones and avoiding them.
In 2014, aviation authorities issued warnings about Ukrainian airspace, telling airlines to fly above a certain altitude because of the fighting involving pro-****** ****** ***** with Russian-made surface-to-air missiles, who had already shot down government military planes.
Some airlines opted to fly around ******* completely, even though that meant longer flights and more fuel burn. ***************** opted to keep flying over *******, just at a higher altitude. The result was catastrophic.
“If you told passengers, `It’s going to take a couple more hours to get where you want to go, or we can get you there quicker but you might get shot down,’ I think they would say, `We’ll take the extra hours,”’ Goelz said.
Source: The Associated Press