Iranian Aircraft Down 15/07/2009
 

A sad day
 

Many dead' in Iranian air crash


http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/image...ng_226x170.gif
An Iranian passenger plane carrying 150 people has crashed in the north of the country, Irna state news agency says.
An Iranian official said the plane broke into pieces and all those on board are feared dead.
The plane, reportedly a Tupolev, came down in the Takestan region of Qazvin province, state television said.
The aircraft was travelling to Yerevan in Armenia, from the Iranian capital, Tehran, when it crashed, Iranian media reports say.

caspian airlines had/has five tu 154's...(looks like a trident or a 727).

technical problems, emergency landing, sixteen mins after takeoff!
 

Up to 168 aboard killed in Iran plane crash

Wed Jul 15, 2009 6:01am EDT

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TEHRAN (Reuters) - A Tupolev passenger aircraft crashed in northwestern Iran on Wednesday and 168 people on board were killed, Iranian media reported.

The Caspian Airlines aircraft was carrying 153 passengers and 15 crew, Reza Jafarzadeh, a spokesman for Iran's aviation organization, told state television.

State television showed footage of debris from the plane and some body parts.

"It's been a major disaster with pieces of aircraft spread over an area of 200 square meters," a fire brigade official told Iranian state television.

"There was an explosion which left an indentation 10 meters deep in the ground. There was nothing we could do. We tried to put out the fire as best we could," he said.

Other television pictures showed a large crater gouged into farmland with mangled pieces of metal scattered around. Smoke rose from the site as police and bystanders gathered around.

The plane was traveling from Tehran to Yerevan in Armenia when it came down at 11:33 a.m. (0703 GMT) near the city of Qazvin, the official IRNA news agency said.

The plane crashed 16 minutes after take-off from the capital's Imam Khomeini International airport, it said.

The semi-official Fars News Agency quoted a senior provincial official, Sirous Saberi, as saying the plane had experienced technical problems and had tried to do an emergency landing.

"Unfortunately the plane caught fire in the air and it crashed ... different small parts of this plane can be seen on the ground," he said.

Qazvin police commander Massoud Jafari told IRNA, "Evidence shows that this passenger plane has been completely destroyed."

A fire brigade official, Hossein Behzadpour, said firefighters were trying to extinguish the fire.

(Reporting by Zahra Hosseinian and Parisa Hafezi; Writing by Fredrik Dahl; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Caspian Airlines have 5 Tu-154m Aircraft reg EP-CPG, CPN, CPO, CPS & CPT. Obviously too early to determine which frame perished.
JSP

EP-CPG
 

Aviation Herald and BBC (which has a picture of the acft on its site) suggest it may be EP-CPG:

Crash: Caspian Airlines T154 near Janat-Abad on Jul 15th 2009, impacted terrain and burst into flames

JetPhotos.Net Photo » EP-CPG (CN: 91A-898) Caspian Airlines Tupolev Tu-154M by John Fitzpatrick

Tail No EP-CPG, MSN 748, manufactured in 1987.

The registration is an important part of the facts as is the ground track flown etc etc..

The registration confirms the actual operator, type aircraft (upgrades etc.) and maintenance history. In most accidents it is no more than a mere formality, simply stated and thus we can move on as new facts become available.

From news feed on yahoo...


The plane's tail burst into flames in the air and the aircraft circled as if looking for a place to land before it crashed, an unidentified witness told the semi-official ISNA news agency.

sounds like an engine blew (uncontained failure) and it impacted other engines and or systems like hydraulics

this, just from the report that there were flames near the tail.

Descent rate off radar reported as exceeding 15,000fpm? Crash site 10 meters deep and 200 meters for debris field? No big pieces in the video. wx does not appear to be a factor.

No previous incidents/accidents for Caspian.

168 killed in Iran plane crash
 

TEHRAN, IRAN — A Russian-made Iranian passenger plane carrying nearly 170 people crashed shortly after takeoff Wednesday, smashing into a field northwest of the capital and shattering to pieces. State television said all on board were killed.

The plane's tail burst into flames in the air and the aircraft circled as if looking for a place to land before it crashed, an unidentified witness told the semi-official ISNA news agency.
The impact gouged a deep trench in the dirt field, which was littered with smoking wreckage and body parts, according to photos from the scene. Footage aired on state TV showed a large chunk of a wing, but much of the wreckage appeared to be in small shreds, and emergency workers and witnesses picked around the shredded metal for bodies and flight data recorders to determine the cause of the crash.

The Caspian Airlines Tupolev jet had taken off from Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport Wednesday and was headed to the Armenian capital Yerevan. It crashed about 16 minutes after takeoff near the village of Jannat Abad outside the city of Qazvin, around 75 miles northwest of Tehran, civil aviation spokesman Reza Jaafarzadeh told state media.

The cause of the crash was not immediately known, but Iran has frequent crashes that are blamed on poor maintenance of its aging fleet. Hossein Ayaznia, an aviation police official, said emergency workers were searching for the plane's black box.
The deputy chairman of Armenia's civil aviation authority Arsen Pogosian told reporters in Yerevan there were 154 passengers and 15 crewmembers on board the TU-154M. Earlier, Jaafarzadeh had put the number at 153 passengers and 15 crew, and the reason for the discrepancy was not immediately known.

Six Armenian citizens and two Georgian citizens were on the flight, and the rest were likely Iranians, Pogosian said.
Serob Karapetian, the chief of Yerevan airport's aviation security service, said the plane may have attempted an emergency landing, but reports that it caught fire in the air were "only one version." He did not elaborate.
Qazvin emergency services director Hossein Bahzadpour told the IRNA news agency that The plane was completely destroyed in the crash and shattered to pieces, Qazvin emergency services director Hossein Behzadpour told the state news agency IRNA.
"The force of the crash was so serious that pieces of the aircraft were thrown over a 200 meter area. Unfortunately, all the bodies were totally destroyed," Behzadpour said.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad issued a statement expressing condolences for the deaths and urging a swift investigation of the cause.
Also among the passengers were eight members of Iran's national youth judo team, along with two trainers and a delegation chief, who were scheduled to train with the Armenian judo team before attending competitions in Hungary on Aug. 6, state TV said.
Tehran blames the maintenance woes of its airlines in part on U.S. sanctions that prevent Iran from getting spare parts for some planes. However, Caspian Airlines — an Iranian-Russian joint venture founded in 1993 — uses Russian-made Tupolevs whose maintenance would be less impaired by American sanctions.
In February 2006, a Russian-made TU-154 operated by Iran Airtour, which is affiliated with Iran's national carrier, crashed during landing in Tehran, killing 29 of the 148 people on board. Another Airtour Tupolev crashed in 2002 in the mountains of western Iran, killing all 199 on board.
The crashes have also affected Iran's military. In December 2005, 115 people were killed when a U.S.-made C-130 plane, crashed into a 10-story building near Tehran's Mehrabad airport. In Nov. 2007, a Russian-made Iranian military plane crashed shortly after takeoff killing 36 members of the elite Revolutionary Guards.

Before crashing, the plane's tail was on fire as it circled in the air, one witness told The Associated Press.
"Then, I saw the plane crashing nose-down. It hit the ground causing a big explosion. The impact shook the ground like an earthquake. Then, plane pieces were scattered all over the agricultural fields," Ali Akbar Hashemi, a 23-year-old who was laying gas pipes in a nearby home, told AP by phone.
The impact blasted a deep trench in the dirt field, which was littered with smoking wreckage, body parts and personal items from the Tupolev jet, according to photos from the scene. Firefighters put out the flaming wreckage, which officials said was strewn over a 200 yard (meter) area. A large chunk of a wing was visible in footage of the scene, but much of the wreckage appeared to be in small shreds.

well done to Quest on CNN this afternoon giving a fairly balanced response to this accident and its relationship to other recent accidents after being questioned by a co-presenter who was heading down the usual sensationalist route. For a non aviation jouralist he represented well, for the general public, what I belive most in the airline industry would basically agree with :D

Source ATDB
 

EP-CPG Tu-154M MSN 748 Build 04_87 Caspian AL RV/CPN ( in :1998)
ex YA-TAR @ Ariana Afghan AL (in :20-04-87)
Destroyed at IKA near Takestan, Qazvin 15/07/09

Thank you, Xolodenko, for one of the most incisive and relevant posts on this thread. This is yet another example of western sanctions against Iran penalising the ordinary people of Iran.

How is this from the BBC? (report by John Leyne): "Iran has a notoriously bad air safety record. Because of sanctions imposed by the United States, Iran relies on an increasingly ageing fleet of airliners, and has trouble buying spares".

Almost accepts the "blame the US" line trotted out by the Iranians. Sorry for bringing politics into a discussion of an emerging tragedy, but the Beeb should know better.

Comment
 

Would it be correct to say that whilst Russian (ex-Soviet?) aircraft are not as technologically advanced as, say, Airbuses and Boeings, they are generally solid and reliable aircraft, well-suited to their operating environment?

I would also note that Caspian Air as a joint Iranian-Russian venture would be less vulnerable to impact from sanctions than would other Iranian airlines.

In some other cases, I could buy the ideas that sanctions were a contributing factor, but here, it is a very minor factor if it is even a factor at all.

Any non-Russian/CIS parts on TU154M would be limited to TCAS/Mode-S and EGPWS/TAWS, althouth I think there is now Russian TAWS produced as well.

TU154M engines used to be well known for shaft bearing problems in the past leading to IFSD, and unconfirmed rumors this aircraft had an engine change in Ukraine just a few days ago...

I'm not sure I'd even agree with the assertion that they're not as technologically advanced. Russian equipment is fantastic, and in some ways more advanced than 'Western' equipment. Engine failure rates though, are on the high side.

That said, the BBC's statement that somehow US sanctions can be linked to this crash is UTTERLY outrageous! The Iranians are free to order new Russian equipment (and some have indeed ordered TU-204s) and can procure US equipment from third parties (ie. lessors) that are more than 7 years old.