Black box recovered after jet crash that killed 77 in Iran
Source: Agencies |
January 11, 2011, Tuesday
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INVESTIGATORS yesterday found the black box from a passenger jet that broke to pieces on impact while attempting an emergency landing in a snowstorm in northwestern Iran, killing at least 77 people.
The pilots of the Boeing 727, operated by Iran's national airline and carrying 104 passengers and crew, reported a technical failure to the control tower before trying to make the landing on Sunday night, state-run TV reported.
The IranAir aircraft broke into several pieces, but there was no explosion or fire.
TV footage showed the plane's crumpled fuselage lying in a field, torn apart in several places, under whirling snow in the darkness as rescue workers and local farmers searched for survivors in the hours after the crash.
Heavy snow hampered rescue efforts, the head of the state emergency center, Gholam Reza Masoumi, said yesterday.
State TV said the aircraft disappeared from radar and went down in farmland after making a second attempt to land at the airport in the northwestern city of Orumiyeh. The nature of the technical failure was not clear.
Iran's Transport Minister Hamid Behbahani said 77 people died and 27 were injured, some critically. Behbahani said the flight was carrying 104 passengers and crew. The state news agency IRNA said two children were among the dead.
Behbahani said the plane's flight data recorder, known as the black box, has been recovered "and is now being studied by a committee probing the crash."
Some of the passengers were able to walk away from the landing, said Abbas Mosayebi, a spokesman for the civil aviation authority.
There were conflicting accounts on whether all 104 on board were accounted for, with some TV reports saying all were found and others saying two remained missing.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent a message of condolence to the families of the victims and ordered a quick investigation.
The aircraft was headed from Tehran to Orumiyeh, capital of West Azerbaijan Province, a distance of about 700 kilometers.
Iran has a history of frequent air accidents blamed on its aging aircraft and poor maintenance. Many of the Boeing aircraft in IranAir's fleet were bought before the country's 1979 Islamic Revolution, which disrupted ties with the United States and Europe.
Iranian airlines, including those run by the state, are chronically strapped for cash, and maintenance has suffered, experts say. US sanctions prevent Iran from updating its 30-year-old American aircraft and make it difficult to get European spare parts or planes as well. The country has come to rely on Russian aircraft, many of them Soviet-era planes that are harder to get parts since the Soviet Union's fall.
The pilots of the Boeing 727, operated by Iran's national airline and carrying 104 passengers and crew, reported a technical failure to the control tower before trying to make the landing on Sunday night, state-run TV reported.
The IranAir aircraft broke into several pieces, but there was no explosion or fire.
TV footage showed the plane's crumpled fuselage lying in a field, torn apart in several places, under whirling snow in the darkness as rescue workers and local farmers searched for survivors in the hours after the crash.
Heavy snow hampered rescue efforts, the head of the state emergency center, Gholam Reza Masoumi, said yesterday.
State TV said the aircraft disappeared from radar and went down in farmland after making a second attempt to land at the airport in the northwestern city of Orumiyeh. The nature of the technical failure was not clear.
Iran's Transport Minister Hamid Behbahani said 77 people died and 27 were injured, some critically. Behbahani said the flight was carrying 104 passengers and crew. The state news agency IRNA said two children were among the dead.
Behbahani said the plane's flight data recorder, known as the black box, has been recovered "and is now being studied by a committee probing the crash."
Some of the passengers were able to walk away from the landing, said Abbas Mosayebi, a spokesman for the civil aviation authority.
There were conflicting accounts on whether all 104 on board were accounted for, with some TV reports saying all were found and others saying two remained missing.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent a message of condolence to the families of the victims and ordered a quick investigation.
The aircraft was headed from Tehran to Orumiyeh, capital of West Azerbaijan Province, a distance of about 700 kilometers.
Iran has a history of frequent air accidents blamed on its aging aircraft and poor maintenance. Many of the Boeing aircraft in IranAir's fleet were bought before the country's 1979 Islamic Revolution, which disrupted ties with the United States and Europe.
Iranian airlines, including those run by the state, are chronically strapped for cash, and maintenance has suffered, experts say. US sanctions prevent Iran from updating its 30-year-old American aircraft and make it difficult to get European spare parts or planes as well. The country has come to rely on Russian aircraft, many of them Soviet-era planes that are harder to get parts since the Soviet Union's fall.
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