Teheran: An Iranian passenger plane skidded off the runway on Friday during its landing in northeast Iran and crashed, shredding the cockpit into a tangled mass of wreckage and killing 17 people, the state news agency said.
Television footage showed the plane, which was carrying 153 passengers, sitting at an angle, its tail awkwardly on the ground and the mangled front end pointing upward. The rest of the craft appeared largely intact.
It was the latest Iranian air disaster and came just over a week after another passenger plane nose-dived into the ground on July 15 shortly after take off, killing all 168 people aboard. Iran's aging fleet is plagued by maintenance problems, blamed on financial straits and US sanctions that make it harder for the country to get many types of spare parts.
The IRNA news agency reported on Friday that the tires failed on landing and it skidded into a wall, though no wall was visible in the footage.
The Russian-made Ilyushin-62 plane from the privately owned Aria Airlines flew from the capital Tehran to the northeastern city of Mashhad, 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) away.
Local official Ghahrman Rashid told the state news agency that another 20 people were injured in the crash and that all survivors had been evacuated from the scene.
The manager of Aria Airlines was aboard and died as well, the state news agency added.
Iranian airlines, including state-run ones, are chronically strapped for cash, and maintenance has suffered, experts say.
U S sanctions prevent Iran from updating its 30-year-old American aircraft and make it difficult to get European spare parts or planes as well. The country has come to rely on Russian aircraft, many of them Soviet-era planes that are harder to get parts for since the Soviet Union's fall.
Iran's worst crash came in February 2003 and also involved a Russian-made Ilyushin that plowed into the mountains of southeastern Iran, killing 302 aboard — mostly members of the elite Revolutionary Guard.
Some of the jets in Iran's fleet are U.S.-made craft bought before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which led to a cut off in ties between the nations. U S sanctions since prevent Iran from buying parts for those planes or new ones.
In December 2005, 115 people were killed when a pre-1979 U S-made C-130 plane, crashed into a 10-story building near Tehran's Mehrabad airport.
The sanctions also bar sales of European jets with a certain amount of U S parts, limiting Iran's ability to buy from Europe.
As a result, Iran has focused on Russian-built planes — like the Tupolev and Ilyushins, the Soviet-era workhorses for Russian civil air fleets. After the Soviet collapse, government funding sharply declined for manufacturers of aircraft and spare parts, and other countries using the planes have had a harder time getting parts.
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