Universal Ramblings

ALL 168 people on board an Iranian plane are believed to be dead after it crashed into farmland in the north of the country. The aircraft was traveling from Tehran to Yerevan in Armenia. “On board the plane there were 151 adults, 2 children and 15 crew members,” said Caspian Airline’s representative in Yerevan Arlen Davudyan told Reuters at Yerevan Airport. A senior Iranian provincial official, Sirous Saberi, said the aircraft had experienced technical problems and had tried to do an emergency landing. “Unfortunately the plane caught fire in the air and it crashed,” he told semi-official Fars News Agency.

The official IRNA news agency said it crashed at 11:33 a.m. (0703 GMT) but Jafarzadeh later told state television this was the time it departed from the capital’s Imam Khomeini International airport.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president, has ordered the transport ministry to launch a probe into the disaster.

Kieran Daly of Air Transport Intelligence told Al Jazeera the crash was “a devastating impact to the ground which suggests that either the aircraft was completely out of control and unflyable … or that for some reason the pilot flew inadvertently into the ground”.

He added that recovering the “black box” flight recording device would be crucial in helping to identify the cause of the crash.

“It may be the case that the pilot had said there was an existing fault with the aircraft that he was trying to handle which will point investigators to the cause.

Iran, which has been under years of international sanctions, has suffered a number of aviation disasters over the past decade.

Iran’s civil and military fleet is made up of ancient aircraft in very poor condition due to their age and lack of maintenance. The Iranian regime is barred by sanctions from buying American Boeing planes or European Airbus craft when they include a significant number of US parts.

Caspian Airlines was established in 1992 in Tehran, according to its website.

It said it operates more than 50 regular and numerous charter flights each week between Iranian cities and international flights to Hungary, the United Arab Emirates, Syria, Ukraine, Armenia, Belarus, Turkey.

RAW Video of the Iran Plane Crash from Associated Press: