It taxied to the southeast before coming about to take off to the northwest. The white part of the track is on the ground.
A lot is strange about this shotdown. As I understand the plane took off facing SE then turned around NW. If they expected US to strike in retaliation to their strike on Iraqi target the US strike would has come from S-SW and it could have take no less than 40 minutes for cruise missiles to reach anywhere near Tehran even from the most favorable position (a ship on the north side of the Persian Gulf for example) given the platform was ready to take a shot locked and loaded.
I understand how an inexperienced operator could have confused a low-flying commercial airliner with a Tomahawk and it is consistent with the way missiles were fired but all the doubts above should have been taken into account and they shouldn’t have been that reckless in direct proximity of a busy international airport anyway.
I’m surprised that the airport wasn’t shut down if they were on high alert for incoming. How many flights went out that evening?
It taxied to the southeast before coming about to take off to the northwest. The white part of the track is on the ground.