Aria Airlines plane crash in Iran kills 17

Passenger plane, Aria Airlines Flight 1525, caught on fire while landing in Mashhad, Iran, skidded off the runway, and smashed into a wall that shredded the cockpit.

Passenger plane, Aria Airlines Flight 1525, caught on fire while landing in Mashhad, Iran, skidded off the runway, and smashed into a wall that shredded the cockpit. It is reported that 17 are dead and 23 are injured. The plane was carrying 153 people from Tehran to Mashhad, in northeastern Iran. All survivors had been evacuated from the scene.

Initial reports indicate the aircraft was an Ilyushin 62 jet, designed in the Soviet Union in the early 1960s.

There were conflicting reports on the cause of the accident, with some claiming a tire burst into flames upon landing. However, AFP reported that Iran’s Deputy Transport Minister Ahmad Majidi said the plane landed in the middle of the runway, rather than the beginning.

“Because the tarmac’s length is short, it has gone off the tarmac and crashed into the opposite wall,” he said.

Television footage showed the cockpit of the jet smashed badly, certainly suggesting the plane had crashed into a wall before veering into a farm field.

– Aria Airโ€™s flight certification license has been revoked, the director of Iranโ€™s Civil Aviation Organization (CAO), Mohammad-Ali Ilkhani, announced on Saturday.

The decision was made in response to the Aria Air Flight 1525 accident, which occurred on Friday when the plane suffered a tire burst, skidded on the runaway, and hit the Mashhad airport fence and an electricity pylon, leaving 16 dead and 31 injured.

The passenger plane took off from Tehran and touched down at Mashhadโ€™s Shahid Hasheminejad Airport at 6:20 p.m. local time with 153 onboard.

Thirteen crew members and three passengers were killed in the accident. Nine of the 13 dead crew members were from Kazakhstan. Aria Air Managing Director Mahdi Dadpay and his son were among the dead.

The plane belonged to D.E.T.A. Air, a company based in Kazakhstan, but was leased by Iranโ€™s Aria Air for charter flights.

The incident came less than 10 days after Caspian Airlines Flight 7908 — a 23-year-old Russian-made Tupolev Tu154M plane — crashed in northwestern Iran, killing all 153 passengers and 15 crew members aboard.

Ilkhani stated that the CAO will seriously deal with airlines that are lax about flight safety.

He said a special committee of the CAO Flight Standards Department was sent to the scene to determine the cause of the accident.

However, preliminary investigations show that the airplane was landing at a speed of 200 miles per hour although the landing speed should not have exceeded 165 miles per hour, he added

This was the second fatal air crash in Iran this month. A Caspian Airlines jet crashed 10 days ago, killing all 168 people on board.

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Linda Hohnholz

Editor in chief for eTurboNews based in the eTN HQ.

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