39 killed as Iranian plane takes off
Print Edition
A PASSENGER plane assembled in Iran crashed while taking off from the capital yesterday, killing 39 people and injuring another nine onboard, according to a senior transport official.
The IrAn-140 operated by domestic carrier Sepahan Air crashed in a residential area near Tehran’s Mehrabad airport. State TV said the plane’s tail struck the cables of an electricity tower before it hit the ground and burst into flames. The official IRNA news agency said the plane suffered an engine failure before it went down.
Ahmad Majidi, deputy transport minister, provided the casualty figures on TV.
The crash happened shortly after the plane took off at 9:20am local time, bound for the town of Tabas in eastern Iran.
Members of the Revolutionary Guard worked to secure the crash site and security and rescue personnel combed the wreckage as onlookers gathered shortly after the plane went down. The plane’s mangled but largely intact tail section was torn from the fuselage and came to rest on a nearby road.
State TV said the bodies of some of the victims were so badly burned they could not be identified. They will be handed over to relatives after DNA tests to determine their identities.
The IrAn-140 is a twin-engine turboprop plane based on Ukrainian technology that is assembled under license in Iran. It is a version of the Antonov An-140 regional plane and can carry up to 52 passengers.
A similar plane crashed during a training flight in the city of Isfahan in February 2009, killing five people.
Lawmaker Mehrdad Lahouti said the earlier accident should have been a wake-up call.
“Lawmakers visited the production site of the plane and expressed concern about its safety,” IRNA quoted him as saying. “This company should have not been allowed to operate the plane to avoid such a bitter incident.”
An official for Sepahan Air said the carrier is affiliated with the Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Industrial Company, also known as HESA. The airline was set up in 2010 and had not had any previous crashes.
HESA has ties to Iran’s Ministry of Defense and is the company that assembles the IrAn-140.
Mehrabad, in western Tehran, is the busier of two main airports serving the capital, and primarily handles domestic flights. Most international flights use the newer Imam Khomeini International Airport.
US sanctions prevent Iran from updating its American aircraft and make it difficult to get European spare parts or planes. The country has come to rely on Russian aircraft, many of them Soviet-era planes that are harder to get parts for since the Soviet Union’s fall.
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