Iran Plane Crash Leads to Search-and-Rescue Effort at 14,500 Feet
Abbas Ahmad Akhoundi, the minister of roads and urban development, said on Monday said
that there was "total ambiguity" surrounding the crashing of the plane, an ATR-72 twin-engine turboprop used for short regional flights, which was en route to the southwestern city of Yasuj from Tehran on Sunday morning.
DENA IRAQ Yasuj KUWAIT Persian Gulf SAUDI ARABIA 400 miles FEB. 18, 2018
Mohammad Taghi Tabatabai, a spokesman for Iran Aseman Airlines, first told state television that everyone aboard the aircraft had been killed.
Mr. Akhoundi told state television that 11 groups of experts were investigating flight details, weather conditions near the destination
and radar data from air-traffic control to find out what might have caused the crash.
News reports said it disappeared from radar screens 50 minutes after taking off from Mehrabad International
Airport, in western Tehran, which mainly serves domestic flights but has some international routes.
19, 2018
TEHRAN — Search-and-rescue workers continued to scour a mountainous region of Iran on Monday for a plane
that crashed a day earlier, most likely killing all 66 people on board.
The sanctions prevented the oil-rich country from updating its fleet, forcing it to use substandard Russian planes
and to patch up older models far past their normal years of service, using spare parts bought on the black market.
