Plane Crash in Iran: Failed Navigation System was to Blame

At about 8:30 on the morning of Monday, January 14, people near the Fath Airport in Karaj near Tehran heard a terrifying sound that shook the windows of their homes and businesses. An Iranian Army Air Force Boeing 707 cargo plane had overrun the runway and burst into flames after crashing into a residential villa. “It was lucky that the villa was empty, otherwise the casualties would have been higher,” one eyewitness told IranWire.

According to Iranian media, of the 16 on board, only one person miraculously survived. The others, 14 men and one woman, lost their lives in the incident. According to an army spokesperson, the plane was carrying frozen lamb from Bishkek, the capital of the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan, to be distributed among the needy. “The lamb carcasses were thrown out of the plane’s wreckage, creating a weird scene,” the eyewitness said. “The burned lamb carcasses were mixed with human bodies and pieces of the plane.” According to him, the crowd around the airport grew so big that the rescue workers had to push back onlookers in order to do their jobs.

According to Fars News Agency, the plane was scheduled to land at the nearby Payam International Airport, but landed at Fath Airport by mistake. However, the Army’s Public Relations office claimed that the plane had been forced to make an emergency landing at Fath Airport.

Payam Airport is located 35 kilometers from Tehran and is used for cargo transport, serving Iran’s information and communications technology industry. The airport is operated by Payam Aviation Services Co. and belongs to Iran’s Ministry of Information and Communications Technology. It is also used as a training site for pilots.

 “Landing by mistake is not out of the question,” one airline pilot told IranWire. “Fath and Payam airports are on the same path and are very close to each other. It is highly likely that the pilot landed at Fath Airport by mistake. The runway at Fath is short for a Boeing 707 and that is why the plane overran the runway and hit a residential area.”

Failure of Navigation System

According to the pilot, a failure in the navigation system of the plane is the likely reason for the ensuing disaster. “All over the world, when two airports are close to each other, there is a system that warns the pilot to prevent an error, but we do not have this system and this makes it possible to land mistakenly,” he told IranWire.

An aviation expert told the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA) that this was not the first time that the proximity of the two airports has led to a pilot making an error. In November, he said, a veteran pilot flying a passenger airliner from Mashhad to Payam Airport mistook Fath Airport for Payam Airport and descended toward the runway. At the last moment, he realized his error and ascended again. This error could have cost the 150 passengers and crew their lives.

The airline pilot we spoke to agreed with the aviation expert’s view of events. “Even though something like this had happened before, the pilot was not warned that there was another runway close to Payam Airport,” he said.

The BBC reported that the plane was a 14 Boeing 707 refueling tanker that had been built to order from the Iranian Air Force prior the 1979 Islamic Revolution [Persian link]. Its first flight took place on February 19, 1976, in Seattle in the United States. Two months later it was delivered to the Iranian Air Force with the registration number 5-8312. During the eight-year Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, the plane served as a refueling tanker for Iranian Phantom F-4 and F-14 fighter jets.

In 2003, the plane was converted from a refueling tanker to a passenger airliner and supplied to Saha Airlines, a domestic carrier. In 2009 it was taken out of service after an accident at Ahvaz airport. After temporary repairs, it was transferred to Tehran. Between 2014 and 2016 it underwent fundamental repairs and was transferred to the army. According to reports, the plane had been used to transfer technical personnel for the air force and deliver food to Syria.

“Iran is one of the last countries to fly the 707, which was produced between 1957 and 1979,” reported the New York Times. “Many airplanes in the country are old: United States sanctions prevent the  military and civilian carriers in Iran from buying new airplanes, and make it very difficult to obtain parts for those they already have.”