Cites Landing Gear, Engine Failures

Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Commander Yahya Rahim Safavi (center), speaking to the press about Monday's Dassault Falcon Jet crash, said that the aircraft suffered both landing gear and engine problems before crashing.

Safavi, a Brigadier General in the IRGC, said that the twin-engine Falcon 20 was enroute from Tehran to Oroumiyeh near the Turkish border, when the pilot, Brigadier General Abbas Karbandi-Mojarrad (some sources: Karvandi-Mojarrad), informed the control tower that he could not extend the landing gear.

It seems from Safavi's statements that Karbandi-Mojarrad and his copilot, Brigadier General Ahmad Elhaminejad, were able to cycle the landing gear partially, but were then unable to get them fully up or fully down. 

"The plane's pilot then asked permission to return [to Tehran], and before getting far from the [Oroumiyeh] tower, he contacted the tower again to say that both engines had also failed."

"That was the last transmission between the plane and the tower, after which the IRGC Falcon crashed in a garden."

Another IRGC spokesman, Gen. Masoud Jazayeri, speaking on Iranian state radio, offered a fundamentally identical story -- trouble with, first, the landing gear, and then an engine flameout in bad weather.

The Iranian officers did not speculate about whether the problem might have been caused by icing or something simpler, like fuel exhaustion (the wreckage does not seem to show any signs of fire). They both stressed that there were no signs of sabotage or other foul play.  "We don't think so at present," Safavi said, "unless if the technicians investigating the matter were to have a contrary opinion."

The IRGC has been on the defensive about its aviation program since the December 6 crash of an IRGC C-130 in Tehran. Finger-pointing in that accident continues, with IRGC maintenance and training and the US Arms Embargo both getting some of the blame in Iranian public opinion.

The IRGC operates a number of Dassault Falcon 20 light transports which were purchased directly from France. The separate Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force also operates Falcons in the VIP transport role, but those were among the fleet of jets flown from Iraq to Iran during the first Gulf War.

FMI: www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iran/