Search for missing aircraft
BAD WEATHER: STRONG WINDS AND FOG FORCE IRANIAN RESCUERS TO RETURN TO BASE
The passenger plane, with 66 aboard, disappeared in the mountains on Sunday.
Iranian rescue teams battled severe weather yesterday as they searched for a passenger plane that disappeared high in the Zagros mountains the previous day with 66 people on board.
Several helicopters that had deployed at dawn to hunt for Aseman Airlines flight EP3704 were forced to return to base, officials said.
“Unfortunately due to strong winds and fog reducing visibility, it was not possible for helicopters to continue their search,” a Red Crescent official told the Isna news agency.
“Teams are searching by foot and so far they have not found anything.”
Officials said hundreds of mountaineers, dogs and drones were operating around the Dena mountain at altitudes as high as 4 500 metres.
The ATR-72 twin-engine plane, in service for 25 years, left the capital’s Mehrabad airport at about 8am on Sunday and was heading towards the city of Yasuj, some 500km to the south.
Several relatives of passengers have travelled to the Dena mountain area where the plane is thought to have come down.
A team of crash investigators from French air safety agency BEA was set to arrive in Iran later yesterday. “Three investigators and our technical advisors will go to the site,” a BEA spokesperson said.
Aseman Airlines was blacklisted by the European Commission in December 2016 – one of only three airlines barred over safety concerns. The other 190 airlines banned by Europe were blacklisted due to broader concerns over safety oversight in their respective countries.
Iran has complained that sanctions imposed by the US have jeopardised the safety of its airlines, making it difficult to maintain and modernise ageing fleets.
In a working paper presented to the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organisation in 2013, Iran said US sanctions were barring “the acquisition of parts, services and support essential to aviation safety”.
Iran has suffered multiple aviation disasters, most recently in 2014, when 39 people were killed as a Sepahan Airlines plane crashed just after take-off from Tehran.