Air Crash Victims: Complain to Whom?

Omid Memarian, Rooz Online:

While the country and especially the journalistic community of Iran is in grief over the terrible air accident last week that killed over 115 individuals, the public continues to press for answers to the event. Some of the passengers had been in contact with their relatives during the last moments of the flight of the military aircraft bound south of the country.

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It was noteworthy that the military committee established to investigate the accident as instructed by the Leader, immediately announced the victims as martyrs and provided 30 million Rials in compensation for the surviving family members of the victims.

While denying reports that some individuals had warned prior to the flight of the existence of technical problems related to Lockheed’s C-130 military transport, some sources talk of passengers knowing of technical defects of the plane prior to its departure and take off, adding fuel to the controversy and pain to the surviving members. The British newspaper Daily Telegraph also claims that aircraft officials knew of the problems of the aircraft before the flight.

Government officials have continued to deny such claims, while the judiciary has said it will launch an investigation and interview those making claims that some individuals knew of technical problems of the aircraft prior to the flight.

Mojgan Afshari, the sister of a journalist who was killed on the flight asks, “Why did they put all the journalists on the same flight that had a technical problem? We want to file a complaint, but do not know with whom.” She and others like her feel that filing a complaint in official government forums would not produce any honest results when one side of a dispute was the government itself.

Hamshahri newspaper refers to the wife of a victim who said, “The aircraft remained on the tarmac for three hours because its pilots refused to take it into flight.”

Mohammad Javad Rooh, a journalist for Sharq newspaper was among the first to report the technical problems of the plane. Just one hour after the accident, he wrote a piece in his web blog in which he wrote, “I have just heard some very said news. Ali-reza Baradaran, a well known and liked photojournalist of Fars News Agency who died in the plane crash, had contacted his colleagues at the news agency just 30 minutes before the flight and told them, “the plane has a technical problem and the pilot is not willing to board the aircraft. So we are waiting for a pilot from the next shift to come and take over. They say he is braver than the current pilot.” Rooh said that some of the passengers were writing their wills before the flight. “My question remains: why did they board the plane?” Rooh asks, adding, “This may explain why the military denies that the aircraft had a technical problem before the flight.”

This is not the first air accident in recent years. Just 2 years ago a Russian built IL 76 crashed in the south of Iran, killing 302 passengers. Spare parts have been an issue with the Iranian aircraft industry as the country faces sanctions from the country of the manufacturers, in this case the United States. Two decades after the US sanctions, US made aircraft are gradually retired, but officials are accused of not doing enough to protect the lives of passengers and safety of aircraft. Parts from other aircraft are scavenged to replace aging parts of other aircraft. People expect the government to be responsible for the safety of flights. “The sanctions that exist against Iran are the results of political decisions and the public should not have to pay a price for this,” in the words of a Tehrani resident.

The reactions to the event in Iran have varied, but the journalistic community questions the government’s policy of purchasing aircraft from Russia or finding alternatives to keep its aircraft fleet flight-worthy. “Even if they have to buy Russian aircraft, at least they should buy their best, not their worst,” says an Iranian weblogger.

The BBS quotes air industry sources that confirm the inability of aircraft manufacturers, and in this case US’s Lockheed Martin, to provide service, repairs or spare parts to its aircraft owned by Iran due to the existing sanctions. “The only solution for Iran in this situation is to buy parts on the black market,” he says.

Other flight experts have said that Tehran’s bad weather may have contributed to this particular accident, as pollution was exceptionally bad on the day of the accident.