Iran asks French experts to assist with black boxes of downed jet

Iranian investigators have asked France’s BEA air accident agency to read black boxes from a downed Ukrainian jetliner, Iran’s envoy to the United Nations aviation agency said, Arab News informs.

The Ukraine International Airlines flight was shot down on Jan. 8 by an Iranian ground-to-air missile, killing 176 people in what Tehran termed a “disastrous mistake” at a time of heightened tensions with the United States.

The fate of the cockpit voice and data ‘black-box’ recorders has been the subject of an international standoff eclipsed by the coronavirus crisis, which Iran says has also contributed to delays in a probe by Iran’s Air Accident Investigation Board, Arab News reminds.