Iran teams find wreckage of plane in Zagros mountains
A rescue helicopter searches for the wreckage of
Aseman Airlines flight EP3704 in Iran's Zagros mountains. (Photo: AFP/Morteza
Salehi)
TEHRAN: Iranian search teams found the wreckage on Tuesday
(Feb 20) of a plane that went missing in the Zagros mountains two days earlier
with 66 people on board, a spokesman said.
Aseman Airlines flight EP3704
disappeared in the Zagros range on Sunday morning, around 45 minutes after
taking off from Tehran.
After two days of heavy snow and fog, the weather
finally cleared on Tuesday morning, giving helicopter teams much better
visibility.
"The Revolutionary Guards' helicopters this morning found the
wreckage of the plane on Dena mountain," spokesman Ramezan Sharif told state
broadcaster IRIB.
Route and information on flight EP3704 from Tehran
to Yasuj, which disappeared on Sunday (Feb 18) with 66 people on board. (Photo:
AFP/Kun Tian)
An IRIB reporter who spoke to one of the pilots said
he had seen "scattered bodies around the plane" and that it was located in
Noghol village, around 4,000 metres up Dena mountain.
"Since yesterday
the Guards' drones started carefully identifying the geographical area where the
plane had probably crashed and this morning two helicopters of the air forces
were dispatched to the location," Sharif said.
Snowmobiles were deployed
earlier on the 4,409-metre peak, where more than 100 mountaineers have also been
aiding the search.
"Last night, a number of people stayed on the mountain
and through coordination with local guides managed to search all crevices,"
Mansour Shishefuroosh, head of a regional crisis centre, told the ISNA news
agency.
Some 500 images taken by drones were being analysed overnight, he
added.
The ATR-72 twin-engine plane, in service since 1993, flew early
Sunday from Mehrabad airport towards the city of Yasuj, some 500 kilometres to
the south.
Poor visibility meant some 60 helicopter sorties on Monday
could find no trace of the plane.
A team of crash investigators from
French air safety agency BEA were also due to arrive in Iran on Monday, but
their arrival had not yet been confirmed.
AVIATION SAFETY
The
incident has reawakened concerns over aviation safety in Iran, which has been
exacerbated by international sanctions over the years.
Aseman Airlines
was blacklisted by the European Commission in December 2016.
It was one
of only three airlines barred over safety concerns - the other 190 being
blacklisted due to broader concerns over oversight in their respective
countries.
Iran has complained that sanctions imposed by the United
States have jeopardised the safety of its airlines and made it difficult to
maintain and modernise ageing fleets.
Aseman was forced to ground many of
its planes at the height of the sanctions due to difficulties in obtaining
spares.
Rescuers search for the wreckage of Aseman Airlines
flight EP3704 in Iran's Zagros mountains. (Photo: AFP/Morteza Salehi)
In
a working paper presented to the United Nations' International Civil Aviation
Organization (ICAO) in 2013, Iran said US sanctions were blocking "the
acquisition of parts, services and support essential to aviation
safety".
Iran has suffered multiple aviation disasters, most recently in
2014 when 39 people were killed as a Sepahan Airlines plane crashed just after
take-off from Tehran, narrowly avoiding many more deaths when it plummeted near
a busy market.
But figures from the Flight Safety Foundation, a US-based
NGO, suggest Iran is nonetheless above-average in implementing ICAO safety
standards.
Lifting sanctions on aviation purchases was a key clause in
the nuclear deal that Iran signed with world powers in 2015.
Following
the deal, Aseman Airlines finalised an agreement to buy 30 Boeing 737 MAX jets
for US$3 billion last June, with an option to buy 30 more.
The sale could
still be scuppered if US President Donald Trump chooses to reimpose sanctions in
the coming months, as he has threatened to do.
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