The technical failure of the Norwegian plane and our missed opportunities

The technical failure of the Norwegian plane and our missed opportunities
(Mohammed Fadeli – Faculty member of Shahid Beheshti University)

A Boeing 737 belonging to Norwegian Airlines had to land at Shiraz airport due to engine failure on December 23, 2017, when it was on its way from the United Arab Emirates to Oslo, Norway. Passengers and crew left Iran one day later, but the plane was grounded at Shiraz airport for 70 days until the necessary parts to repair the plane arrived and left Shiraz airport on March 4. This story contained important points that were simply overlooked.

First, if the Norwegian airline has to be grounded for 70 days at Shiraz airport to supply parts, it can be estimated that the sanctions on Iran’s aviation industry – a vast country with great development capacity of the aviation industry; And what a unique geographical position to become a center for the world’s aviation industry. This one sentence shows that sanctions are not a blessing, and they will cause a lot of damage to this land and people.

Second, it is reasonable to ask, if the Norwegian company endured a seventy-day delay to deliver parts to Iran and repair the plane (and as a result, incurred many costs, including the cost of a significant and expensive capital remaining unused), how much losses will the Iranian airlines incur due to the grounding. becoming expensive planes, bypassing sanctions and accepting safety risks.

Third, from the point of view of public diplomacy, there was a place for a well-equipped documentary team to cover this entire story and record every moment and process of the story. The actions of the Americans in the whole sanctions, and especially the sanctions on Iran’s aviation industry, which directly deals with human lives (and of course the rest of the sanctions related to medicine, food, etc.) are very inhumane and morally condemned. The story of the Norwegian Boeing 737 was an opportunity to draw the world’s attention to the sufferings caused by the sanctions against Iran’s aviation industry.

Production and extensive news coverage of this story could have been part of our public diplomacy against sanctions. Apart from trying to remove the sanctions, the moral legitimacy of the sanctions should also be targeted. The plane landed, took off and left, without us benefiting from this story with dozens of state television channels.

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This post is written by monese_ghamgosar