CNN
July 19 2009

Iran plane crash bodies returned to families

updated 5:49 a.m. EDT, Sun July 19, 2009

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) — The bodies of 152 people killed in a fiery plane
crash in Iran Wednesday have been returned to their families, an
Iranian state broadcaster reported Sunday.

An Iranian Armenian woman places flower at crash site.

1 of 3 more photos » Ahmad Majidi, the head of the special working
group investigating the Caspian Airlines crash, also said a Russian
team had arrived in Iran to help study the crash of the Russian-made
plane, Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting said.

The plane went down in a field near the city of Qavzin Wednesday,
killing all 168 people on board and leaving a huge smoldering crater.

Majidi did not say what had happened to the 16 bodies that have not
been handed over.

The plane’s flight data recorders have been recovered and are being
studied by Iranian and Russian experts, IRIB said. Fragments of the
plane are also being examined to help determine the cause of the
crash, Majidi said.

The plane "disintegrated into pieces," said Col. Masood Jafari Nasab,
security commander of Qazvin. See a map of the crash location »

Video of the crash site showed a huge crater in the earth scattered
with charred pieces of the plane and tattered passports. Watch as the
flight data recorders are recovered »

"The aircraft all of a sudden fell out of the sky and exploded on
impact, where you see the crater," a witness told Iran’s
government-backed Press TV from the crash site.

Ten members of the country’s youth judo team were aboard the plane,
several sources including Press TV reported. The government-backed
network said the dead included eight athletes and two coaches.

It was at least the fifth major airline accident in the world this
year, following crashes of planes flown by Colgan Air, Turkish
Airlines, Air France and Yemenia Airways. A US Airways pilot managed
to land his plane safely on the Hudson river in New York City in
January, with no major injuries, after the plane lost power.

But aviation safety expert John Wiley said there was no reason to fear
air travel in general, and no one airline or aircraft is particularly
dangerous.

Caspian Airlines Flight 7908 — a Russian-made Tupolev Tu-154M plane
— went down near the village of Jannatabad near Qazvin at 11:33
a.m. (2:03 a.m. ET) Wednesday, Press TV reported.

Conversations between the pilot and the ground were normal and did not
indicate any technical problems, the network’s Web site reported,
citing the managing director of Iran’s airport authority without
naming him.

The Tupolev 154 is essentially banned in the West because it does not
comply with European noise and pollution regulations, but it has a
safer-than-average accident record, Wiley said. Wednesday’s crash is
the first on record for Caspian Airlines, which was founded in 1993,
he added.

The plane crashed 16 minutes after takeoff, said the newspaper
Hamshari, quoting a spokesman from Iran’s civil aviation organization.

That would have put the flight in one of the safest stages of travel,
according to International Air Transport Association data. Only about
5 percent of accidents take place during the phase called en-route
climb, 16 to 20 minutes into a flight, when a plane climbs to cruising
altitude of 35,000 feet.