Data recorder recovered from crash of Turkish jet

TEHRAN — Investigators on Monday found the “black box” from a Turkish private jet that crashed in an Iranian mountain range on its way from the United Arab Emirates to Istanbul, killing all 11 people on board that included a Turkish bride-to-be and her bachelorette party.

Authorities recovered all the dead from the crash site in the Zagros Mountains outside of the city of Shahr-e Kord, some 230 miles south of Iran’s capital, Tehran, according to a report by the state-run IRNA news agency.

Officials have so far identified eight bodies, including that of Mina Basaran, the 28-year-old daughter of the chairman of Turkey’s Basaran Investment Holding, the semiofficial Mehr news agency reported Monday.

Families of the victims arrived Monday in Shahr-e Kord, accompanied by Turkish diplomats, IRNA reported.

The flight took off Sunday from Sharjah International Airport in the UAE. A little over an hour into the flight, the aircraft rapidly gained altitude and then dropped drastically within minutes, according to FlightRadar24, a flighttracking website.

It remains unclear what caused the crash, though a witness told state television the Bombardier CL604 was on fire before it went down.

Finding the aircraft’s “black box” will help investigators trying to piece together what happened. The equipment records cockpit conversations and radio transmissions, as well as other data from a flight.

Sharjah civil aviation authorities said in a statement late Sunday that the plane’s eight passengers were six Turks and two Spaniards. Three others were the flight crew.

“The plane did not apply for maintenance procedures while on the ground of the airport,” their statement said.

Basaran and her friends had celebrated her bachelorette party in Dubai. Turkey’s Transport Ministry said the aircraft belonged to Basaran Investment Holding.

Mina Basaran recently posted photographs on the photo-sharing app Instagram of what appeared to be her bachelorette party, which included eight women. Among the photographs was an image of the plane posted three days ago. In it, Basaran posed on the tarmac carrying flowers, wearing a denim jacket reading “Mrs. Bride” and the hashtag “#bettertogether.”

On Saturday, Basaran posted a picture with smiling friends from a Dubai resort. The last videos posted to her account showed her enjoying a concert by the British pop star Rita Ora at a popular Dubai nightclub.

Sunday’s crash came less than a month after the crash of an Iranian ATR-72, a twin-engine turboprop, which killed all 65 people aboard.