Tehran, July 17: Technical problems were the likely cause of the crash of an Iranian airliner that ploughed into a field in northwestern Iran killing all 168 on board, a transport official said on Thursday.
“The pilot could probably not be blamed for this crash and we think it was likely due to a technical problem,” Ahmad Majidi, head of the transport ministry’s crisis unit, was quoted as saying by a news agency.
“Because of the severity of the accident two systems linked with the black box have been damaged in such a way that the tapes have come out of the boxes and scattered on the ground,” he said.
Majidi insisted that the Caspian Airlines Tupolev-154 had undergone a safety check in Russia last month and had received a flight licence until 2010.
The plane caught fire in mid-air en route to Armenia and plunged into farmland on on Wednesday just 16 minutes after take-off in the worst plane crash in Iran in years.
–Agencies