2009年8月8日星期六

Iran recovers third black box of crashed plane

TEHRAN, July 16 (Xinhua) -- The Rescue Chief of Iran's Red Crescent Society said Thursday that Iran has recovered the third black box of the crashed plane, the local Mehr news agency reported.

"The rescuers found the third black box of the (crashed) plane four kilometers away from the crash site," the Rescue Chief Ahmad Esfandiari told Mehr, adding that "the rescuers have handed it over to the security officials of Civil Aviation Organization."

Earlier on Thursday, Iran announced that two black boxes of the passenger plane which crashed on Wednesday near the country's northwestern city of Gazvin were found.

The black boxes were heavily damaged and experts from Iran's Civil Aviation Organization (CAO) are trying to retrieve data, head of the Crisis Working Group of Iran's Road and Transportation Ministry Ahmad Majidi was quoted as saying by local satellite Press TV.

"If efforts to retrieve data from the boxes fail, they will be sent back to the country that has produced them so that they could be repaired in order to find the reason behind the crash," Majidi said.

Iran's Civil Aviation Organization Spokesman Reza Jafarzadeh said Thursday that Russian experts will join Iran experts to probe passenger plane crash, the local ISNA news agency reported.

"Five Russian experts are due in Tehran tomorrow (on Friday) to cooperate to probe the air crash," Jafarzadeh said to ISNA.

All the 168 people aboard, including 153 passengers and 15 crewmembers were killed during the crash.

The cause of the disaster is not immediately clear, but the Road and Transportation Minister's envoy have already attributed the incident to the probable "technical problems of the airliner, not to the pilot's failure."

In the past, Iran's airlines have suffered a number of flight disasters, both civil and military use.

Experts believe that the U.S.-imposed sanctions against Iran, which prevented its allies from selling aircraft or aircraft parts to the country, "have undermined safety standards within Iran's civil and military aviation fleet and is increasing the likelihood of more major air disasters."

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