Mehr Abad flight information center said that the plane, a Sepahan Air flight bound for Tabas, took off at 9:18 AM local time on Sunday and crashed minutes after in Azadi Township in Tehran.
According to official reports 38 people were killed on the scene of incident and another person died of injuries en route to hospital. Nine more people are in hospital, someof them in critical conditions.
Head of Parliament Construction Commission told that he boarded the plane in a test flight from Mehr Abad to Imam Khomeini International Airport. “We felt severe shakes in the plane that time and demanded investigations into the issue,” he said.
Hossein Garrousi, who represents Shahriar, Quds and Malard in the Parliament, told Mehr News that during an Industry Commission supervisory visit to Iran-140 production process, “we demanded that the plane should meet global standards of aviation.”
“Sepahan Air cooperated with a Ukrainian manufacturer in production of Iran-140, which is a version of Antonov planes, a Russian prototype,” he added, and hoped that black box would shed more light to the possible causes of the crash.
“The pilot requested an emergency landing back in Mehr Abad minutes after takeoff, which shows technical problem in the plane,” Garrousi said.
In an interview to Mehr Parliamentary correspondent, Ali Akbar Aqaei, Parliament Construction Commission member also pointed to the same problem in test flight.
Ahmad Majidi, Ministry of Road Disaster Management deputy said that National Aviation Agency Commission for Accidents was officially responsible body to carry investigation into the issue, and “it will announce the results of investigations in shortest possible time, since DPR and FDR boxes of the plane have been found.”
President Rouhani offered condolences to the bereaved families of the victims of plane crash and received the Ministry of Road and Ministry of Defense reports about the Iran-140 crash. He strictly demanded that Ministry of Health provide necessary treatments for the wounded victims of the air crash.
President also ordered a halt to the flights by Iran-140 until the plane fulfills the requirements for technical flight standards in the future.
Head of Tehran's Forensic Medicine Organization said that the Organization would use DNA tests to identify the victims of the flight crash. Dr. Bashir Nazparvar said that around 48 hours is needed for the results of DNA tests to come out. “So far, 37 corpses have been transferred to Kahrizak moratorium. We have not yet received corpses of two died in hospital,” he added. “The corpses would not be easily identified, since they suffered severe burning,” he asserted.
SH/HRGH
MNA
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