Iranians hit back at Russian comments over Tupolev crash

An Iranian aviation official on Wednesday dismissed the remarks by a Russian official about the cause of the crash of a Tupolev passenger plane near Tehran in July 2009 and similar incidents in the past, calling them "non-expert statements".

"Judging over air crashes without assessing and reviewing all the elements involved in the incidents is not acceptable in the eyes of the global aviation industry experts," Spokesman of Iran's Aviation Organization Reza Jafarzadeh was reported as telling the Fars News Agency (FNA)

The remarks by the superintendent manager of Tupolev's designing department came after several Russian-made passenger planes crashed in Iran in just a few months.

A Caspian Airlines Tupolev-154 caught fire in mid-air en route to Armenia and plunged into farmland in July, killing all 153 passengers and 15 crew in the worst air disaster in Iran in years.

According to Iran's Aviation Organization, the 7908 Caspian Airlines flight crashed 16 minutes after its take-off from Imam Khomeini International Airport (IKIA).

Russia's Ilyushin Finance Company (IFC) official Nikolaevich Minushkin told FNA on the sidelined of MAKS international aerospace show in Moscow last week that the cause for high air crashes in Iran is that the operating companies did not respect aviation standards.

Minushkin reiterated that the Iranian operators do not adopt proper measures regarding repair and maintenance and periodic checking of the planes.

In reply, Jafarzadeh told FNA, "Studies conducted during the last one or two decades on Tupolev crashes in Iran, indicate that human errors, and not a lack of observation of aviation standards by Iranian airline companies, were the main cause of the incidents."