Crash plane had been grounded for 7 years
IRAN: An aircraft carrying 65 passengers, including a child, has crashed into a mountainous region in central Iran in bad weather, killing everyone on board. The Iranian carrier Aseman Airlines’s Flight 3704 crashed near Semirom, about 600km south of Tehran.
The aircraft, made by the Franco-Italian company ATR, got into trouble after taking off from Tehran’s Mehrabad airport bound for the southwest city of Yasuj, emergency services said.
Rescue helicopters were unable to land because of heavy fog, snow and high winds. Rescuers were yesterday still trying to access the area by land.
Aviation experts told the stateowned website Otagh Khahbar that the same aircraft had to return to base mid-flight because of a technical problem three weeks ago.
In October, Aseman, which is Iran’s third largest airline by fleet size, posted on Instagram that the plane had been ‘‘grounded’’ for the past seven years but was to be repaired and put back into service. It is unclear what caused the plane to be grounded in the first place.
Tehran says American sanctions have long prevented it from buying new aircraft or spare parts from the West.
A spokesman for the airline told state television: ‘‘After searching the area, we learnt that unfortunately ... our dear passengers had lost their lives.’’ The company initially said 66 people were on board, until it emerged that one passenger had missed the flight.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, and President Rouhani offered their condolences.
Aviation experts also told the Otagh Khahbar news website that the turboprop aircraft used was reliable but not suitable for the Tehran-Yasuj route because it was not built for high altitude and so was potentially ‘‘deadly’’ over the mountainous region.
It was the deadliest Iranian incident since 2011, when 77 people were killed on an Iran Air flight that crashed near Urmia airport in poor weather.
Emergency services were alerted when Flight 3704 disappeared from radar screens 50 minutes after taking off.
The airline said it crashed into Mt Dena, which is more than 4400m. The last signal showed it was at only 5200m and descending.
The captain, Hojatollah Foolad, was an experienced pilot, who local media said had safely landed a plane along the same TehranYasuj route four years earlier when it suffered engine failure.
One person who has flown the route before posted a video yesterday showing his hair-raising flight, which comes in just over the mountain peaks.
Iran’s ageing fleet has suffered several aircraft crashes in the past few decades. The deadliest aviation technical failure was in 2009 when 168 people died aboard a Caspian Airlines flight that crashed outside the city of Qazvin in northwest Iran.