Plane crash claims 29 in Iran
Published 9:00 pm Friday, September 1, 2006
TEHRAN, Iran – A landing Iranian passenger plane skidded off the runway and raked its wing along the ground, sparking a fire that killed 29 of the 148 people on board Friday in the latest deadly crash of a Russian-made aircraft.
Rescue workers in the northeastern city of Mashhad carried survivors on stretchers out of the gutted craft, which lay in a pool of water near the runway with its middle charred and its roof collapsed. Iranian television footage showed firefighters spraying the engines with water.
“The plane was shaking badly during the landing, then it suddenly lurched to the left,” one survivor, Sahar Karimi, said from a hospital in Mashhad.
“Then it caught fire, and all the passengers rushed to the emergency exit,” she said.
The 11 crew members survived, “and this can help the investigation team to reach its conclusions sooner,” a Civil Aviation official said.
The craft was a Russian-made Tupolev 154. A Tu-154 owned by Russia’s Pulkovo Airlines crashed in Ukraine on Aug. 22 while en route from a Russian resort to St. Petersburg, killing all 170 people on board.
In 2002, a Russian-made Tu-154 – also operated by Iran Airtour – crashed in the mountains of western Iran, killing all 119 people aboard.
Iran has frequent air accidents, blamed on its aging fleet of aircraft and poor maintenance. In the deadliest recent crash, 110 people were killed in December when a military transport hit a building near Tehran’s airport.
The country often blames the accidents on U.S. sanctions barring American companies from selling to Iran. Its airlines have tried to upgrade their fleet by buying European aircraft, but have been turned down amid U.S. pressure on Europe not to sell.
However, it does not have similar difficulty buying parts for its Russian planes. Iranian airlines have bought Russian craft in recent years, but usually secondhand ones to save money.
Western nations have offered to open the door to sales of new planes and spare parts in an incentive package aimed at getting it to roll back its nuclear program. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has vowed never to give up the program.
Iran’s 13 airlines have 120 planes, with an average age of 16. Iran Airtour has 12 Tupolevs.
