loading SWF with code - fails

I packaged up my iOS application which loads SWFs containing bytecode. I set my swf-version=21 and when I packaged it, the resulting swf (when I look inside the IPA package) was only 511 bytes. (its an 85k swf of almost all code). I guess this means it stripped the code properly???

The SWF loads (as in the loader returns something), but when I try to get the content using event.target.content, it fails to make a movieclip out of it.

var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest(url);

var loaderContext:LoaderContext = new LoaderContext(false, ApplicationDomain.currentDomain);

load(request, loaderContext);

Air version is 3.8.

Any ideas what I might be doing wrong?

PS I am pretty sure the basic app is functional because the Android port works fine.