TORONTO MOTHER, SON DIE IN IRAN AIR CRASH
Adrian Morrow

Toronto Star
717
July 17 2009
Canada

Father describes seeing family off at airport; investigators recover
plane’s flight recorders

On Wednesday morning, Vahik Khachik dropped off his wife and 3-year-old
son at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport.

The Toronto family had been in Iran for 1 1/2 weeks, attending
Khachik’s niece’s wedding and baptizing their son, Edward.

Nana Antashyam, Khachik’s wife, was heading to Armenia to help plan
her sister’s birthday party and introduce Edward to her mother,
whom she hadn’t seen in five years. Edward was homesick, and wanted
to return to Canada.

"I saw them off from behind the glass," Khachik said during a phone
interview from Tehran yesterday. "That was the last time I saw them."

He had barely returned to his sister’s house from the airport when
he heard the plane had gone down. The Caspian Airlines flight crashed
Wednesday in an agricultural area, 16 minutes after takeoff, killing
all 156 passengers and 12 crew.

"I screamed. I was hoping it was not true," he said. "Nana was a
wonderful person and a good mother, a great friend."

Khachik said Antashyam, 35, worked as a piano teacher and loved to
play classical music.

John Funnell, owner and manager of the Ontario Conservatory of Music
franchise in Scarborough where Antashyam worked, said she was a good
instructor who taught up to Grade 9.

"She was very, very quiet, very self-effacing, but knew her job and
had a great rapport with the children," he said. "The children all
adored her. They felt comfortable around her."

Rodney Moore, a spokesman for the Canadian Department of Foreign
Affairs and International Trade, said the department had been informed
that two Canadian citizens had died in the crash, but could not
provide further details.

The cause of the air crash so far has not been determined.

Authorities have recovered the plane’s three black boxes, containing
the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorders.

The plane, a Russian-made Tu-154M, was bound for Yerevan, Armenia’s
capital.

The passengers, most of whom were Iranians, included 11 members of
the country’s national youth judo team.