BA Boeing Co

By Aresu Eqbali and Rory Jones 

A Ukraine International Airlines jetliner crashed shortly after takeoff from Tehran on Wednesday, killing all 176 passengers and crew members on board.

The Boeing Co. 737-800 single-aisle jet crashed after departing the Iranian capital's Imam Khomeini International Airport en route to Kyiv, according to Iranian state television.

The Ukrainian Embassy in Tehran, citing preliminary information, said the plane crashed as a result of an engine failure owing to technical reasons. A terrorist attack is currently ruled out, it added in a statement on its website.

Iran's official state news agency reported the plane crashed because of an engine fire due to a technical fault, without explaining how that conclusion was reached.

"All the passengers have died," Pirhossein Koulivand, the head of Iran's emergency medical services, told state television. "Bodies are being collected by the relief team to transfer to [the] coroner as soon as possible," he said.

Reza Jafarzadeh, a spokesman for Iran's Civil Aviation Organization, told state television the plane left the airport at 6:12 a.m. and the accident occurred a few minutes later. He said the aircraft had 167 passengers and nine crew members on board.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said all passengers and crew members were killed, citing preliminary data, in a statement on his official Facebook page.

"Scary news from the Middle East," Mr. Zelensky said. "Our embassy is clarifying information about the circumstances of the tragedy and the death toll. My sincere condolences to the family and friends of all passengers and crew."

The cause of an aircraft accident can take months or years to resolve, but heightened tensions between Iran and the U.S. have focused attention on potential ripple effects in the aviation industry in one of the world's busiest flight corridors, a crossroads for services between the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Africa.

Ukraine International Airlines has a fleet of 40 jets, most of them modern, Western-built jetliners that are rented from aircraft lessors. The airline couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

Iran has a relatively poor air safety record, with its airlines and infrastructure hobbled by sanctions that led to shortages of spare parts and the cancellation of $40 billion in new aircraft from Boeing and Airbus SE.

An Iranian air accident investigation team is at the scene collecting bodies and has found the plane's black box, Iranian state television reported.

State television reported that most of the passengers were Iranian. Hassan Rezaifar, head of the Civil Aviation Organization's accident investigation told state TV that the pilot didn't contact air traffic control about an emergency situation.

The crash came after Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched a series of strikes against two bases with U.S. troops in Iraq, which the Iranian force said were retribution for the U.S. killing of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

Over the past year, Boeing Co. has suffered a series of technical failures with its newer-version 737 MAX aircraft. 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 Boeing grounding the MAX fleet globally.

Deadly crashes involving the 737-800, a 1990s update of Boeing's workhorse single-aisle jet and part of the 737NG family, have been relatively rare.

In 2006, a new 737-800 crashed in Brazil following a mid-air collision with an executive jet. In 2007, a 737-800 crashed after takeoff in Cameroon, killing 114 passengers and crew. In 2010, all but eight of 166 passengers and crew died when one of the planes over-ran a runway in India.

More than 7,000 of the NG jets have been delivered globally, with the 800 being the most common variant in the series. The Ukrainian 737 was delivered in July 2016, according to various aviation tracking websites.

A Boeing spokesman said the company is aware of the media reports and is gathering information.

Georgi Kantchev in Moscow and Ben Otto contributed to this article.

Write to Rory Jones at rory.jones@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 08, 2020 03:03 ET (08:03 GMT)

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