Airlines are coming under increasing scrutiny for continuing to fly in Iran after a missile barrage and warnings by U.S. safety regulators about the dangerous conditions.
American, British and Canadian officials said Thursday it is "highly likely" that Iran shot down a Ukrainian airliner near Tehran this week, possibly by accident, during a time of high political tension in the region.
Foreign airlines aren't bound by FAA directives, but they often follow them. In this case, however, several large international carriers -- including Lufthansa, Turkish Airlines, Qatar Airways and Aeroflot -- continued to fly in and out of Tehran after Iran fired missiles at military bases inside Iraq that house U.S. troops. They still were flying after the FAA warning, and after the Ukrainian jetliner crashed, according to data from Flightradar24, which tracks flights around the world.
After the FAA notices, 12 airliners took off or landed without incident early Wednesday at Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport, according to data from Flightradar24. Ukraine International Airlines flight 752 was No. 13. "I don't think you can fault the airline," said John Cox, a former airline pilot and now a safety consultant. "Iran could have shut their airspace down if they believed there was a threat."
In that incident and the 1988 downing of an Iranian airliner by a missile fired from the U.S. Navy cruiser USS Vincennes --- killing all 290 people on the plane -- it appeared that combatants fired their weapons before they were certain whether the target was a military plane or a civilian one, Cox said.
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