168 Killed in Iran Plane Crash

Plane Crash Iran Media Report Caspian Airlines Plane Completely Destroyed after Crash in Northwest Iran..

by CBS/AP

Published: Wed, July 15, 2009 - 9:23 am CST Last Updated: Wed, July 15, 2009 - 9:25 am CST

(CBS/ AP) An Iranian passenger plane crashed Wednesday in northwest Iran, killing all 168 people on board, state media reported.

The impact gouged a deep trench in the dirt field, which was littered with smoking wreckage in footage shown on state TV. It showed a large chunk of a wing, but much of the wreckage appeared to be in small pieces, and emergency workers and witnesses picked around the shredded metal for bodies.

The Russian-made Caspian Airlines jet was heading from Tehran to the Armenian capital Yerevan near the village of Jannatabad outside the city of Qazvin, around 75 miles northwest of Tehran, state television said. It crashed at about 11:30 am, 16 minutes after taking off from Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport, TV reported.

The Qazvin emergency services director Hossein Bahzadpour told the IRNA news agency that the plane was completely destroyed and shattered to pieces, and the wreckage was in flames. "It is highly likely that all the passengers on the flight were killed," Bahzadpour said.

Iranian Civil Aviation Organization spokesman Reza Jafarzadeh told state television that 153 passengers and 15 crewmembers were on board. State TV said all were killed.

A Caspian Airlines representative told AP in Yerevan that most of the passengers were Armenians, and that some Georgian citizens were also on board. It was not immediately clear whether there were other nationalities on board. The representative spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to talk to the press.

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.

The Russian-made Tupolev 154 is a Soviet-era workhorse, but the passenger jet has a less-than comforting safety record, reports CBS News correspondent Richard Roth, and Iran has often been criticized for poor plane maintenance.

Roth reports that Iran has complained that its aviation safety is compromised by U.S. and international trade sanctions which make it more difficult to obtain spare parts for aircraft. However, the Tupolev is made in Russia, a nation with which Iran has relatively good relations, so that argument would not apply in this case.

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.

As of July 15, 2009, Caspian Airlines' fleet included four Tupolev 154M passenger jets. Caspian was founded in 1993 and flew regular flights to the United Arab Emirates, Ukraine and Armenia.

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.

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