In a small conference room on the second floor of Kyiv’s busiest airport, a man is crying. His name is Yevhen Dykhne and he is the president of Ukraine International Airlines (UIA).
Five hours earlier, one of the airline’s planes crashed in Iran moments after liftoff. Of the 176 people on board, none survived.
“I offer my deepest condolences to the families of those on board,” Dykhne said at the press briefing, held in Boryspil International Airport on Jan. 8.
It’s the first catastrophe in the company’s history.
Flight PS752 from Tehran to Kyiv took off at 6:10 a.m. local time. Two minutes later the plane disappeared from radars.
Ihor Sosnovsky, UIA’s vice president, said that at 5 a.m. Kyiv time, roughly 10 minutes after takeoff, American news network CNN reported that a plane had crashed near the Iranian capital.
The company quickly began contacting international flight organizations to confirm the crash.
But Dykhne denied that UIA had any reason to expect problems. “I guarantee that all of our planes are fit to fly,” he said.
According to Dykhne, the Boeing 737-800 plane that crashed was brand-new, purchased in 2016 directly from the manufacturer. Its last service test was conducted on Jan. 6.
“There weren’t any problems with the plane,” said Dykhne.
Most passengers were foreign citizens using Kyiv as a stopover for further travels: 63 Canadian citizens, 82 citizens of Iran, 10 citizens of Sweden, four from Afghanistan, three German nationals and three citizens of the United Kingdom.
There were also two Ukrainian passengers on board and nine crew members, all of whom were Ukrainian.
Most of those on board were expected to fly with UIA to Toronto.
Dykhne declined to comment on why the plane crashed, saying that the company will only comment on official information. However, he did repeat that the plane was in good condition and that the crew, led by pilot Volodymyr Hoponenko, was among the company’s best.
The crash comes amid a new wave of tensions between Iran and the U.S., after U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in neighboring Iraq on Jan. 3.
After the killing, Iran promised to retaliate. On Jan. 8, hours before the Ukrainian plane crashed near Tehran, Iran fired 20 ballistic missiles at military bases used by U.S. forces in Iraq.
In the aftermath of the plane crash, multiple unofficial videos were shared on Twitter depicting what appeared to be a plane catching fire and crashing somewhere in Iran.
Qassem Biniaz, an official spokesman for Iran’s Road and Transportation Ministry, said that the plane had taken off from Imam Khomeini International Airport in the Iranian capital when a fire erupted in one of its engines. He did not give further information on what caused the fire.
Dykhne said that UIA is halting all flights to and from Iran until further notice. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on his country’s prosecutor general to open a criminal investigation into the catastrophe and announced the creation of a commission tasked with investigating the plane crash.
