The Peace Tower on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada is shown with the Canadian flag at half mast to honour the victims of flight PS752 from Tehran to Kyiv which went down with 176 passengers and crew on board including 63 Canadians. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said 138 of the 176 passengers aboard the Kyiv-bound plane had connecting flights to Canada.
Majority of them are international students, professors and alumni academics. Some universities lost as many as 6 students among whom were 2 PhD candidates. One of them just got married a few days before the flight that was scheduled to bring them back before the new semester starts this week. One of the two PhD students wrote, just before the flight, that she is travelling in a wrong time and asked for forgiveness if she has done anything wrong to anyone. The flight being the cheapest to arrive in Canada from vacation, reading the negative comments, one student changed it for a little expensive one, is now overjoyed that she narrowly escaped the death.
This is the second deadliest aviation accident for Canada after Air India Flight 182 on 23 June 1985 that killed 329 people, including 268 Canadian citizens.
Canadians express our deepest condolences to those who are mourning the loss of a loved ones.
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@RohithaF thanks for your post. It is a big tragedy this incident occurring. My initial thoughts when I heard about it, that it wasn’t a mechanical problem which was the initial reason given. I thought it may have been from an American missile that may have thought it was another missile from Iran going to Iraq. As we have found out, it was caused by human error with an anti missile defence system in Iran.
I was against the US doing what they did to cause this unrest. When will the US stop causing war and unrest around the world? The Middle East is a beautiful place with beautiful people that just want to get on with their lives the way they want, not the way the US wants.
As I’m living in Qatar, and travel to Europe often and my wife flies to Prague often, I took a screenshot (photo below) of the Qatar Airlines flight that left Doha at 2.30am and flew over the similar area where the Ukraine plane was shot down. This could have easily have been involved. I started to wonder what Qatar Airlines would do as they already have limited airspace to fly currently.
Because of the blockade the UAE and Saudi Arabia have over Qatar currently, those countries are refusing to let Qatar Airlines fly over their countries, which isn’t legal, which is a ruling from the International Court of Justice in the Hague. So if Qatar Airlines did stop flying over Iran and Iraq, Qatar Airlines had very limited options.
I’m pleased tensions have eased and hope they don’t flare up again.
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