168 killed in Iran plane crash

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press Writer Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press Writer – 36 mins ago

TEHRAN, Iran – A Russian-made Iranian passenger plane carrying 168 people crashed shortly after takeoff Wednesday, smashing into a field northwest of the capital and shattering into flaming pieces. All on board were killed in Iran's worst air disaster in six years, officials said.

Before crashing, the plane's tail was on fire as it circled in the air, one witness told The Associated Press.

"Then, I saw the plane crashing nose-down. It hit the ground causing a big explosion. The impact shook the ground like an earthquake. Then, plane pieces were scattered all over the agricultural fields," Ali Akbar Hashemi, a 23-year-old who was laying gas pipes in a nearby home, told AP by phone.

The impact blasted a deep trench in the dirt field, which was littered with smoking wreckage, body parts and personal items from the Tupolev jet, according to photos from the scene. Firefighters put out the flaming wreckage, which officials said was strewn over a 200 yard (meter) area. A large chunk of a wing was visible in footage of the scene, but much of the wreckage appeared to be in small shreds.

Iran has seen numerous crashes in recent years, usually blamed on poor maintenance. Iranian officials often blame U.S. sanctions that prevent it from updating American aircraft bought before the 1979 Islamic revolution and make it difficult to get European spare parts or planes as well.

Iranian airlines and the military have turned increasingly to Russian aircraft, which are not affected by sanctions, but have seen a string of accidents. Two other Tupolev crashes in Iran this decade have killed nearly 140 people.

The Caspian Airlines Tu-154M jet had taken off from Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport on Wednesday morning and was headed to the Armenian capital Yerevan. It crashed at 11:30 am about 16 minutes after takeoff near the village of Jannat Abad outside the city of Qazvin, around 75 miles northwest of Tehran, civil aviation spokesman Reza Jafarzadeh told state media.

At Yerevan's airport, Tina Karapetian, 45, said she had been waiting for her sister and the sister's 6- and 11-year-old sons, who were due on the flight. "What will I do without them?" she said, weeping, before she collapsed to the floor.

The cause of the crash was not immediately known. Hossein Ayaznia, an aviation police official, said emergency workers were searching for the plane's data recorders to get evidence of the cause.

Iran's Jafarzadeh and the deputy chairman of Armenia's civil aviation authority Arsen Pogosian said there were 153 passengers and 15 crewmembers on board the plane. "In all likelihood, all on board were killed," Pogosian told reporters at Yerevan airport.

Most of the passengers were Iranians, many of them from Iran's large ethnic Armenian community, along with six Armenian citizens and two Georgian citizens, Pogosian said. The two Georgians included a staffer from the Caucasus nation's embassy in Yerevan, Georgia's military attache in the Armenian capital said.

Serob Karapetian, the chief of Yerevan airport's aviation security service, said the plane may have attempted an emergency landing, but reports that it caught fire in the air were "only one version." He did not elaborate. A police official told Iran's semi-official ISNA news agency that several witnesses reported seeing the plane's tail on fire in the air as it circled to find a place to land.

The plane was completely destroyed in the crash and shattered to pieces, Qazvin emergency services director Hossein Behzadpour told the state news agency IRNA.

"The force of the crash was so serious that pieces of the aircraft were thrown over a 200 meter area. Unfortunately, all the bodies were totally destroyed," Behzadpour said.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad issued a statement expressing condolences "to the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei and the families of the dead" over what he called a "heart-wrenching tragedy" and ordered an investigation into the cause. Armenia's president, Serge Sarkisian, also expressed his condolences and declared Thursday a day of mourning.

Also among the passengers were eight members of Iran's national youth judo team, along with two trainers and a delegation chief, who were scheduled to train with the Armenian judo team before attending competitions in Hungary on Aug. 6, state TV said.

The crash is the worst since February 2003, when a Russian-made Ilyushin 76 carrying members of the elite Revolutionary Guards crashed in the mountains of southeastern Iran, killing 302 people aboard.

Caspian Airlines is an Iranian-Russian joint venture founded in 1993 whose fleet is made up of Tupolevs.

Soviet-built Tupolev and Antonov planes have long been the mainstays of the civil air fleets in Russia and former Soviet republics. Once considered reliable aircraft, the most widely used models — like the Tu-154 — have in recent years gone largely unmodified or updated by aircraft designers.

The Soviet collapse resulted in the sharp decline in government funding for aircraft spare parts manufacturers and for the aircraft manufactures themselves, and many airlines fell behind in maintenance programs for the planes.

Iran has about a dozen Soviet-built Tu-154 airliners. In 2006, Russia negotiated the sale of five Tu-204s to Iran.

In February 2006, a Russian-made Tu-154 operated by Iran Airtour, which is affiliated with Iran's national carrier, crashed during landing in Tehran, killing 29 of the 148 people on board. Another Airtour Tupolev crashed in 2002 in the mountains of western Iran, killing all 199 on board.

The crashes have also affected Iran's military. In December 2005, 115 people were killed when a pre-1979 U.S.-made C-130 plane, crashed into a 10-story building near Tehran's Mehrabad airport. In Nov. 2007, a Russian-made Iranian military plane crashed shortly after takeoff killing 36 Revolutionary Guards members.

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AP writer Avet Demourian in Yerevan, Armenia, contributed to this report.

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Plane hits wall at Iranian airport, killing 17
24 Jul 2009 19:33:52 GMT
Source: Reuters
(Updates crash description, adds details, background)

By Zahra Hosseinian

TEHRAN, July 24 (Reuters) - At least 17 people were killed and 23 injured when a passenger aircraft veered off the runway and hit a wall while landing at Mashhad airport in northeastern Iran on Friday, media reports said.

The plane, an Ilyushin Il-62 leased by Iran's Aria Tour from Kazakhstan, left the runway and crashed into a boundary wall, state television said.

There were 153 people on board the aircraft, which had flown to Mashhad from Tehran, it said.

Television showed images of the plane with its nose section badly damaged and said the accident was due to a malfunction in the front landing wheels. It said the pilot was among the dead.

Ali Ilkhani, director of Iran's civil aviation, told state television the plane appeared to have tried to land while flying too fast. He said 13 of the dead were crew members, nine of them from Kazakhstan.

Earlier reports said the aircraft had caught fire.

Mohammad-Reza Moti, a provincial emergency aid official, told the state news agency IRNA the injured were being treated in hospitals in Mashhad, an important pilgrimage site for Shi'ite Muslims. The majority of Iranians are Shi'ites.

"Some of the injured are in bad condition," he said.

The crash occurred around 6:20 p.m. (1350 GMT).

"We felt the plane hit uneven ground right after landing ... after the emergency exit was opened, no one dared to jump because it was too high, so we got out over the wing," one of the passengers told state television.

On July 15, a Russian-built Tupolev operated by Iran's Caspian Airlines flying to Armenia crashed in northwestern Iran, killing all 168 people aboard.

U.S. sanctions bar the sale of Boeing aircraft to Iran and hinder it from buying other aircraft or spare parts from the West. Many Western aircraft rely on U.S.-made engines and parts. (Writing by Firouz Sedarat in Dubai, editing by Tim Pearce)


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Thirteen of the dead in Iran plane crash were crew
25 Jul 2009 06:47:56 GMT
Source: Reuters
TEHRAN, July 25 (Reuters) - Thirteen of 16 people killed in a plane accident in northeastern Iran on Friday were crew and the three others were passengers, Iran's state television reported on Saturday.

The passenger plane, an Ilyushin Il-62 from Kazakhstan leased by Iran's Aria Aviation Company, veered from the runway and hit a wall while landing at Mashhad's Hasheminejad Airport.

Iranian media said 30 people were injured in the accident and they were being treated at three hospitals in the same city.

"Nine of the crew members killed in the incident were citizens of Kazakhstan and the remaining four were Iranians," Reza Jafarzadeh, the spokesman of Iran's aviation organisation told the official IRNA news agency on Saturday.

There were 153 people on board the aircraft, which had flown to Mashhad from Tehran. Iran's television showed images of the plane with its front completely damaged and said the accident was due to a malfunction in the aircraft's wheels.

Iranian media reported that the pilot was among the dead.

State television said the flying license of Aria Aviation Company had been suspended until an investigation into the plane crash was completed.

Mashhad is a popular pilgrimage destination for Shi'ite Muslims who make up the majority of Iran's population.

On July 15, a Russian-built Tupolev aircraft crashed in Iran on its way to Armenia, after catching fire mid-air and ploughing into farmland killing all 168 people on board. That accident, in which six Armenian and two Georgian citizens were killed, was the worst plane crash in Iran for six years.

Air safety experts have said Iran has a poor record, with a string of crashes in the past few decades -- many involving Russian-made aircraft.

U.S. sanctions against Iran have prevented it from buying new aircraft or spares from the West, forcing it to supplement its ageing fleet of Boeing and Airbus planes with aircraft from the former Soviet Union. (Writing by Zahra Hosseinian)