Plane crash in Iran
 

Passenger plane crashes in Iran mountains - BBC News

Not much detail yet other than:

* was routing Tehran - Yasruj
* around 60 aboard
* came down in a mountainous area in Central Iran

Iranian aircraft with 60 people on board crashed near the city of Semirom in the Isfahan Province of Iran, according to Tasnim news agency citing Iran's emergency centre. The aircraft went off radar midflight from Tehran to Yasuj.

According to TV2 Denmark quoting Tasnim and Fars it's an ATR 72 of Aseman Airlines

According to the BBC bad weather is hampering rescue efforts

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-...eople-12045621

"Witnesses told local media that it appeared the aircraft was trying to make an emergency landing on a pasture before it crashed in the Dena mountain range."

ATR72-500 according to the latest on this on the BBC,

Passenger plane crashes in Iran mountains - BBC News

Aseman Airlines plane, en route from Tehran to the south-western city of Yasuj, came down in the Zagros mountains.The Red Crescent deployed search and rescue teams to the site near the city of Semirom in Isfahan province. Flight EP 3704 left Tehran at 08:00 local time (04:30 GMT) and disappeared from radar about an hour later. The aircraft crashed on Dena Mountain, 22km (14 miles) from Yasuj, news channel Irinn reported. The plane was a French-made twin-engine turboprop ATR 72-500. On board 60 passengers, 2 security guards, 2 flight attendants and the pilot and co-pilot.
No survivors.
+
The aircraft involved is a 24 year old ATR 72. Registration EP-ATS. MSN 391.According to FR24 logs flight took off at 04:33 UTC. Last signal was received at 05:55 UTC when flight was at 16,975 feet and descending. FR24 state they can only use MLAT for tracking as the six types of the airline carry old type xpdrs.

If it’s 24 years old it can’t be a -500 (properly -212A) AFAIK, which came out I believe in 1997. Anyway, a sad day regardless of the minor details.

Mountains, snow, bad weather, quite "interesting" circling NDB approach and teardrop ... not a combination you want that often.

Jeppesen has only two charts. Appears a VOR/DME was recently installed. Interesting there is no departure procedure.

Per Av Herald the crash site is about 16 miles west, northwest of the airport.

The Associated Press is reporting that until a few months ago the aircraft had been out of service for seven years.

Reportedly WFU due to shortage of spares.

Some bits from Twitter
 

Video supposedly showing a couple of seconds of final approach into Yasuj on a ATR a few months ago:


Iranian Aerospace Forum on Twitter:

One PAX reportedly a no show.

Aircraft overhauled after a few years in storage due to lack of spares, put back in service in November 2017:


This supposedly shows the weather conditions in the area:

Weird, there is such a long valley lining up with that runway in Yasuj, hard to imagine the need to be so low WRT those mountains in the northwest in that clip.

We don't know yet of course but I would very much doubt that aircraft serviceability had any role in this. More likely a scenario relating to weather and procedures.

A really lousy NDB approach. Wonder whether the Iranian aviation authority was/is working on a VOR approach? They spent the funds to install that VOR/DME recently.

from the BBC

Found? No, not confirmed yet.