Passenger Plane Skids off Snowy Runaway in Iran for 2nd Time in a Week

Iran

February 1st, 9:32am

Asharq Al-Awsat

An Iranian passenger plane sits on a road outside Mahshahr airport after skidding off the runway, in southwestern city of Mahshahr, Iran, Monday, Jan. 27, 2020. (AP)

An Iranian jetliner skidded off a snowy runaway in the western city of Kermanshah due to low visibility on Saturday, Iran's state TV said. This is the second time in a week that a plane skidded off the runaway in Iran. There were no injuries and the plane overshot the landing strip by only a few meters, reported state TV Saturday. The Iran Air flight coming from the capital, Tehran, had not experienced any technical problems, it added. The state-run IRNA said one of the plane's wheels slipped six meters due to heavy snowfall when it was in taxiway after landing. On Monday, an Iranian passenger airliner carrying some 150 passengers skidded off the runway and into a highway next to the airport in the southern city of Mahshahr, after losing its landing gear in a hard landing. Iran is still coping with the aftermath of the January 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. Iran has struggled to obtain parts for its aging fleet of airliners amid sanctions by the US. Under its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Iran could purchase new aircraft and had lined up tens of billions of dollars in deals with Airbus and Boeing Co. However, the manufacturers backed away under increasing pressure by President Donald Trump, who ultimately withdrew the US from the nuclear deal in May 2018. Iran has suffered a series of major aviation disasters in recent decades as its fleet aged. That includes the 2009 crash of a Soviet-era Tupolev Tu-154M flown by Caspian Airlines that took off from Tehran heading to Armenia. Investigators believe an engine failure in plane’s tail caused pilots to lose control and smash into the ground at a high speed, killing all 168 people on board. The US Treasury in 2014 separately sanctioned Caspian Airlines, accusing it of transporting paramilitary troops and weapons of the Guard from Iran to Syria to support embattled Bashar Assad in his country’s grinding, years-long war. Prior to the shootdown this month, Iran’s last fatal crash happened in January 2019, when a decades-old Iranian Boeing 707 military cargo plane reportedly carrying meat from Kyrgyzstan crashed while trying to land west of Iran’s capital, killing 15 people on board and leaving a sole survivor.

from Asharq AL-awsat https://aawsat.com/english/home/article/2109911/passenger-plane-skids-snowy-runaway-iran-2nd-time-week