Passengers Asphyxiated Before Crash

Kiarash Kianmehr, Rooz Online:

Based on the chitchat among military officials, some of the passengers on board the C-130 military transport aircraft that crashed last week killing all on aboard and more on the ground, had died of asphyxiation before the plane crashed into a residential area because the plane’s oxygen support system did not work. According to them and others, the plane did not have an emergency oxygen system for passengers. According to this account, many reporters and military personnel died before others did because of the fire and the impact of the aircraft. READ MORE

This account comes at a time when air industry observers have said that all four engines of the aircraft could not have stopped working 8 minutes into its flight, as had been reported.

Officials have not explained why was the crippled the plane not allowed or instructed to land at one of two other closer airports than Mehrabad or the Tehran-Qom highway, or even the plains over which it was flying after it reported its problems to the Mehrabad airport authorities. Those recounting the asphyxiation accounts add that the pilot used his oxygen mask to stay alive and passed on the news of the deaths on board to the control tower of Mehrabad airport.

Air witnesses have said that they had seen a fire at the back of the plane, strengthening the possibility of a saboteage, which has been ignored by officials. This is probably the “different reports” that Hamshahri newspaper refered to last week and even threatened to publish if officials did not honestly investigate the crash and punish those culpable. That threat lead to the summoning of the editor of the paper by the Ministry of Intelligence.