Tehran: How lucky people can be? An aging Iranian passenger airliner carrying 144 people crash-landed on a runway and skidded onto a major highway next to an airport Monday, the latest crash in the Islamic Republic as US sanctions bar it from parts or new aircraft. There was no death toll, only two injured.
Authorities said two people suffered injuries in the hard landing of the McDonnell Douglas MD-83 flown by Caspian Airlines in Mahshahr, a city in Iran’s oil-rich southwestern Khuzestan province.
Passengers, apparently in shock, calmly exited the aircraft with their carry-on baggage out of a door near the cockpit and another over the plane’s wing, video from Iran’s Civil Aviation Network News showed. A flight attendant shouted at passengers to calmly walk away as another crew member joined her on the wing.
“We crashed. We crashed but we are unhurt,” a male passenger said in Farsi in the video. “My hand is shaking.”
Provincial airport director Mohammad Reza Rezanian said all of the passengers had been safely taken off the plane, which had been flying a route from the Iranian capital some 610 kilometers away.
The plane carried 136 passengers and eight crew members, authorities said.
It seems that tragedy was narrowly avoided, however, as images from the scene showed the plane had ground to a halt not far from a populated area. The plane also missed traffic on a major highway linking Mahshahr to Imam Khomeini Port.
Iranian state television said the plane involved in Monday’s crash-landing came in harder than usual and lost its landing gear as it hit the tarmac.
The accident is under investigation, officials said.
The McDonnell Douglas MD-83, a single-aisle workhorse introduced in the mid-1980s, largely has been phased out of commercial air travel in the West. American Airlines retired the last of its MD-80 fleet in September.
The plane involved in Monday’s crash-landing in Iran, registered as EP-CPZ was more than 25 years old. It had flown for airlines in France, Canada, the US, Colombia, Burkina Faso and Ukraine before being registered to Caspian Airlines in August 2012.
The incident comes as Iran is still coping with the aftermath of the accidental downing of a Ukrainian airliner over Tehran. The plane was shot down by the Revolutionary Guard earlier this month amid heightened tensions with the United States, killing all 176 people aboard.
AP
