Boeing 737 crashes in Iran with at least 170 people on board

A Boeing Co. 737 jet carrying at least 170 people crashed in Iran shortly after takeoff due to technical problems, according to local media reports.

State television reported that the plane crashed at 6:22 a.m. local time. Four helicopters and 22 ambulances had been sent to the crash site, according to reports, but severe fire was hampering rescue efforts.

Emergency personnel are trying to rescue any survivors, Pirhossein Koulivand, head of the Iranian Emergency Organization, said on state-run IRINN.

The 737-800 jet was headed for Ukraine, the semi-official Iranian Students News Agency reported. The website flightradar24 showed Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 left Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport for Kyiv’s Boryspil International Airport early Wednesday morning local time.

“We are aware of the media reports out of Iran and we are gathering more information,” Boeing spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in an email.

Ukraine International representatives weren’t immediately reachable. The Ukrainian consulate in Tehran declined to comment.

Website planefinder.net, which tracks flights worldwide, listed the two-engine aircraft as three years old, saying it was delivered in July 2016.

Boeing is already mired in crisis following crashes in October 2018 and last March. Those disasters, which killed nearly 350 people, involved the U.S. manufacturer’s 737 Max jet, which has been grounded globally for 10 months. The 737-800 and 737 Max are both variants of Boeing’s 737 narrow-body planes but the 737-800 hasn’t been grounded.

Boeing is still developing a fix for the flaws discovered in a flight-control system new to the 737 Max model. The 737-800 that is reported to have crashed near Tehran on Wednesday didn’t have that system.