Iranian investigators say burning Ukrainian Boeing was trying to turn back before crashing

The crew of the Ukrainian plane that crashed, killing all 176 people on board, never made a radio call for help and were trying to turn back to the airport when the plane went down, Iranian investigators have said.

The three-year-old jet, which had its last scheduled maintenance on Monday, encountered a technical problem shortly after take-off, said a report issued on Thursday.

Iran’s civil aviation authority made the comments in a preliminary report a day after the Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737-800 crashed.

The investigators said the plane was engulfed in flames before it crashed. They said the crash caused a massive explosion when the plane hit the ground, likely because it had been fully loaded with fuel for the flight to Kyiv, Ukraine.

The report also confirmed that both of the so-called black boxes that contain data and cockpit communications from the plane had been recovered, though they had been damaged and some parts of their memory was lost. Iran’s aviation authority has previously said it will not hand over flight recorders either to the aircraft’s manufacturer or US aviation authorities.

See also: Canada in mourning as most of Ukrainian air crash victims were heading there

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said crash investigators from his country had arrived in Iran to assist in the probe. He said he planned to call Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, about the crash and the investigation.

A summary of the preliminary Iranian report on the crash , which is available in full here.

• After take-off, the flight was cleared to climb and instructed to contact Mehrabad ATC
• Radar contact was lost at 8000 feet
• Crash occurred at 06:18 local time
• Impact occurred in a park and the aircraft disintegrated along a forward trajectory
• An eyewitness on the ground and another flight crew reported a fire on the aircraft
• The direction of ground impact indicates that the plane was on its way back to the airport
• CVR and FDR have been found; outer casing has impact and fire damage
• CAO Iran sent formal notification per ICAO Annex 13
• Per ICAO Annex 13, CAO Iran invited the authorities of Ukraine, USA, Sweden and Canada as party in the investigation
• A special working group on the investigation team will focus on explosives

Read more via The Guardian