This just broke, so details are few and far between, especially given the location, but an Iranian airliner caught fire upon landing in the northeastern part of the country, and 29 people are reported to be dead. Earlier estimates said that 80 people were dead. If I come across any links with real substance, I’ll post them.
Interesting, since we had the USAirways 734 with the landing gear fire yesterday. No word on what type of a/c this one was, or how the fire started.
Edit It’s a Tu-154. Sound familiar? Here’s a brief story with a picture. The blackened, broken fuselage makes it look like more than just a fire.
The Iranians hate the west so much they won’t even buy French airplanes for the airline - they use ancient, and I mean ANCIENT, Soviet airplanes. The last Tu-154was built in the 70’s I think and they were not designed for tens of thousands of cycles.
It’s also a fact that they can’t get Western aircraft because of an embargo against them. They may be able to buy the aircraft but many of the engines are American made in whole or part.
What do they do when they need parts for their 741s and 2s, their 747SPs, their A300s and 310s? Have the local machine shop fabricate pieces?? Wouldn’t seem to work real well w/ avionics equipment.
Iran has frequent plane accidents and has several times blamed them on U.S. sanctions that it says make it difficult to import spare parts, even from Europe. The West offered to open the door to sales of new planes and spare parts in an incentive package aimed at getting it to roll back its nuclear program.
Ironic that one day after the deadline on accepting the incentives offer passes, this occurs. Good timing on our part!! Not that the wacko in charge of Iran will change his ways because of this, or any other misortune caused by the sanctions already in place. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find him in the next poorly maintained death trap that goes down.
I’d bet that Mr. Wacko has his jet especially maintained. Yes, it is ironic. Would he be able to buy US/Europian products via a middle man who’s not blocked by embargos?
Yeah, I’m sure he does too. Maybe one of those death traps will fall on his house. Anyhow, I was thinking about the “middle man” theory myself. What’s stopping them from getting parts from, say, Pakistan, who trades readily with the US, and shares a border with Iran? Do we really keep track that well of the parts that we ship to these other countries?
