168 feared killed in Iran plane crash

A plane bound for Armenia from Iran crashed on Wednesday morning 75 miles northwest of Tehran,killing all 168 people aboard...

A plane bound for Armenia from Iran crashed on Wednesday morning 75 miles northwest of Tehran,killing all 168 people aboard,Iranian state media reported. The passenger plane,a Russian-made Tupolev 154,went down near Qazvin at 11.30 am after leaving Tehran on a flight to Yerevan,the Armenian capital,said Qazvin police chief Hussein Behzadpour to Irans Press TV.

The aircraft,operated by Caspian Airlines,was carrying 153 passengers and 15 crew members,state television reported. TV footages showed smoking ruins,with body parts and bits of the planes shattered fuselage scattered on the field at the site of crash. The crash gouged a trench more than 10 feet deep in the field,near the village of Jannatabad,state news agencies said.

Spokesman for Irans Aviation Organisation Reza Jafarzadeh told Press TV that the plane,Flight 7908,crashed 16 minutes after taking off from Tehrans Imam Khomeini Airport. The cause of the accident is not yet known,and investigators were combing the wreckage for the black box flight recorders,which contain recordings of the flight crews conversations as well as data such as the planes speed,altitude and heading.

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Deputy Governor of Qazvin province Sirous Saberi told Irans Mehr news agency that the plane had experienced a technical problem and was trying to make an emergency landing. A witness told the semi-official ISNA news agency that the planes tail was on fire before it landed. Another witness said the plane had exploded on impact.

Six Armenian citizens and two Georgian citizens were on the flight,the rest were Iranians,AP said,citing the deputy chairman of Armenias civil aviation authority in Yerevan.

Eight members of Irans national youth judo team,two coaches and a delegation chief,were on the plane,on their way to train with the Armenian judo team and attend a competition in Hungary,the Iranian Labor News Agency said. The head of the disaster management centre in Irans Health Ministry said that all aboard were confirmed dead.

Wednesdays crash was the first fatal accident for Caspian Airlines,which is based in Tehran and was founded in 1992. The airline operates a fleet of six TU-154 airliners,all of which date from the mid-1980s to early 1990s. The aircraft that crashed on Wednesday was built in 1986 and was leased to Caspian Airlines in 1998. It is said to be owned by VARZ-400,a Russian aircraft maintenance and overhaul company,according to Ascend,a London-based aviation industry consulting company.

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Iran has a checkered history when it comes to air safety,and many of its deadliest disasters have involved its aging fleet of Soviet-designed planes. In 2006,a TU-154 operated by Iran Airtour burst into flames upon landing in Tehran,killing 29 of the 148 people on board.

With no domestic aviation industry,Iran is dependent on foreign manufacturers for its planes. But trade sanctions in place have hampered access to spare parts as well as purchases of more modern aircraft,particularly from American manufacturers like Boeing.

Wednesdays crash is the eighth fatal accident suffered by the TU-154 in the past 10 years,including one,in 2004,that was the result of a terrorist attack on a Russian carrier. Since entering service in 1971,the TU-154 has suffered 54 crashes,resulting in the deaths of 2,602 passengers and 258 crew members,according to Ascend.