Fateful Seconds of Living Hell, Then Death

"Nineteen seconds after the first missile hit the plane, the voices of pilots inside the cockpit indicated that the passengers were alive ... 25 seconds later the second missile hit the plane."                                                                                 "Therefore, no analysis of the performance and effects of the second missile was obtained from the aircraft's black box.”                                                                 "The data analysis from the black boxes should not be politicized."                           "What is evident is that Iran has accepted the responsibility for the mistake and therefore the country is ready for negotiations on paying full compensation."       Touraj Dehghani-Zanganeh head, Iranian Civil Aviation Organization

In this file photo from January 8, 2020, authorities stand near the wreckage of a Ukraine International Airlines plane that Iran said it accidentally shot down near Imam Khomeini airport in Tehran, killing all 176 people on board. © Abedin Taherkenareh / EFE

Flight PS752 was struck when two missiles 25 seconds apart hit the plane just moments after it left Tehran's main airport on January 8, with 176 passengers and crew aboard. After initially denying that it was responsible for the downing of the passenger jet heading for Ukraine on a regular route, Tehran finally had little option given the evidence, but to admit an 'accident' had occurred and indeed members of its al Quds branch of the Revolutionary Guard Corps shot down the plane.

They had been on high alert for incoming missiles from the U.S. military it was explained and mistook the airliner for a threat. No one survived the destruction of the civilian airliner. That very night Iran had launched a ballistic missile attack against a U.S. base in Iraq, responding to a U.S. targeted drone strike killing Qassem Soleimani on January 3 in Baghdad. A great hero in Iran for his terrorist exploits against the Islamic Republic of Iran's 'enemies', his death might be seen as a preventive against further attacks such as he had engineered.

Iranian citizens demonstrated their anger at the  shooting down of the airliner with its massive loss of life by taking to the streets and vociferously blaming the regime and the IRGC. Most of the victims were Iranian civilians of whom 55 of the total were Iranian citizens of Canada, others Iranian students travelling to Canada to take up academic studies at Canadian universities. Other nations, Ukraine and France among them, lost citizens and await compensation from Iran to go to the families of the bereaved.

What is staggeringly beyond belief is that the regime's elite command military could have been so oblivious to the danger they were placing a commercial airliner and its passengers in, so consumed with its enactment of vengeance attacks they failed to take common-sense precautions, the most elemental of which would have been to close their air space to civilian aircraft at a time of such high tensions between Iran and the U.S., instead of placing so many lives in jeopardy.

Investigators at the scene of the wreckage.(AP: Ebrahim Noroozi/File)

The second missile to bring down Flight PS752 hit the aircraft mere seconds after the first had struck. the gap of time between the two hits, estimated at 19 seconds captured on the black box recordings reflecting the damage the jet sustained from the first missile hit. Difficult to contemplate is the conclusion that the passengers were all alive after the airliner was struck by the first missile. The second one that was dispatched for whatever reason, extinguished all lives. It is the brief intermission between the two strikes that expresses the horror that would have struck all aboard with the realization that their lives were over.

"Our important questions regarding the reason for the delayed takeoff and the pilot's communications within that hour, which should have been included in the report of the black boxes, have also been left conspicuously unanswered." Association of Families of Flight PS752 Victims

The flight crew of the aircraft consisting of two pilots and an instructor travelling in the cockpit had exerted a desperate, last-minute effort to maintain control of the plane -- until the last possible moment, pointed out the Iranian spokesperson. United Nations aviation rules that call for investigations whose aim is solely to prevent future accidents separate from any judicial process, represents the guidelines under which Iran's investigation is being carried out. 

The Civil Aviation Organization of Iran on Sunday published a report on the downloaded data from the Boeing 737 flight and voice recorders which emerged as a focal issue to fully comprehend the prevailing circumstances at the time Flight PS752 was shot down. According to the report released through the French investigation, the recorders had but 19 seconds of conversation following the first explosion, despite the second missile -- according to Dehqani-Zangeneh -- hitting the plane 25 seconds afterward.

Two missiles hit the plane, less than half a minute apart.(AP: Ebrahim Noroozi)