Can a routine flightexpected to take about two hours, turn into a tragedy of enormous proportions? The answer is yes, it has already happened. In 2009, a Russian-built aircraft operating a scheduled flight between Iran and Armenia crashed 16 minutes after takeoff, killing 168 people.
The plane crash
It’s the July 15, 2009It’s 11.30am Iranian time. The flight Caspian Airlines 7908operated by a Tupolev Tu-154M, takes off from Khomeini Airport in Tehran, bound for Yerevan, Armenia. On board are 153 passengers and 15 crew members, including Captain Ali Asghar Shir Akbari, First Officer Javad Masoumi Hesari, Navigator Mahdi Firouse Souheil, and Flight Engineer Nima Salehie Rezve, all of whom are highly experienced and proven. Among the passengers, most of whom are Iranian or Armenian (but there are also Georgians, Canadians, Australian-Iranians, and Americans-Iranians), there are also 8 members of the Iranian junior judo team and two coaches.
But just a few minutes later, as reported by SimpleFlying and confirmed by the chronology officially published in 2014, at an altitude of 9,700 meters the crew sent out a warning about a fire in one of the engines. So the plane descended to 8,700 meters, made a 270-degree turn – essentially because the captain was trying to land as safely as possible – but then began to fall vertically, at a speed of over 250 kilometers per hour. Then it crashed into the ground in a field near the village of Jannatbadin the province of Qazvin: the aircraft creates a crater 10 meters deep, everyone dies instantly and the fire extends over an area of 200 square meters, so much so that in the following 3 hours it has not yet been put out. The Caspian Airlines 7908 thus becomes the fourth worst air accident in terms of number of deaths recorded in Iran.
“I saw the plane nose-down. It hit the ground causing a huge explosion. The impact shook the ground like an earthquake. Then, the pieces of the plane scattered all over the fields.”, an eyewitness says, Ali Akbar Hashemias the BBC writes.
The investigations
The investigation was carried out both in Iran – by the Civil Aviation Organization of Iran (CAO) and led by the chief investigator Ahmad Majidi – both in Armenia, chaired by the then Deputy Prime Minister Armen Gevorgyan.
Although the investigators had to deal with a black box destroyedmuch of the information was readily available from cockpit recordings. Iran released a report on the incident in 2011, but it was only made internationally known in 2019, when it was translated into English.
According to the report, the crash was caused by the Fatigue failure of a rotorresulting in the disintegration of the rotor disk itself. The fragments of the disk destroyed one of the engines, severed the hydraulic systems and part of the fuel lines. The latter caught fire on contact with hot components and hydraulic fluid, causing a fire on the tail of the aircraft, a fire that destroyed the functional rods of the elevator and rudder surfaces. For this reason the pilots lost control.
Causes and risk factors
The accident was therefore caused by a rotor that would have triggered a chain reactionpreventing the pilots from maintaining control of the aircraft. Could it have been predicted? With hindsight everything seems simpler and it is impossible to say with certainty whether the tragedy could have been avoided. However, the red flags would have been there.
The Tupolev of the crash had been built in Russia in 1987. In June 2009, the carrier had been inspected and granted a flight license until 2010. However, according to Jon Leyne of the BBC, Iran’s civil and military air fleets are composed of old and poorly maintained vehicles. Furthermore, following the embargo that was a consequence of the Islamic revolution of 1979, Iran has in fact purchased mostly Russian-made aircraft.
Not only that: shortly before the accident, Tupolev had released a service bulletinwhich called for more checks on the components of the low-pressure compressor. But that bulletin was in Russian; only after the accident were translations made into other languages. All this contributed to unleashing a tug-of-war between Iran and Russia over who was responsible.
However, there were also other risk factors, as reported by AvHerald, factors that contributed to the terrible accident.
Part of the crew reportedly failed to take immediate action to prevent the problem with the affected engine from worsening. Added to this is a Excessive fuel load at the beginning of take-off.