Canada urged Iran to open flight recorders on Flight 752
A look back at the diplomatic pressure over the black boxes of the Ukrainian airliner shot down near Tehran.
What did Ottawa want from Tehran in the weeks after the downing of a Ukrainian airliner? On 6 March 2020, the question was still unresolved, and it centred on the flight recorders.
Two days earlier, on 4 March 2020, Canadian Foreign Minister François-Philippe Champagne urged Iran to allow access to the recorders of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, the passenger plane shot down in January.
The flight was a scheduled service from Tehran to Kyiv, operated by Ukraine International Airlines. On 8 January 2020, the Boeing 737-800 was shot down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps shortly after takeoff. All 176 people on board were killed.
The call from Canada's foreign minister showed that, almost two months after the shootdown, access to the recorders remained a matter of diplomatic pressure.
