Passengers 83. Survivors 22 Date 24 August 2008 Survivor 22 | Crew 7 Registration EX-009 Injuries (nonfatal) 18 Fatalities 68 | |
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Aircraft type Boeing 737-219 Advanced Similar Aeroflot Flight 821, Sudan Airways Flight 109, Continental Airlines Flight 1404, PMTair Flight 241, Yeti Airlines Flight 103 | ||
Iran Aseman Airlines Flight 6895, an Itek Air Boeing 737-219 Advanced, registered as EX-009, was a charter flight operated on behalf of Iran Aseman Airlines which crashed on 24 August 2008 (at 20:30 local time) near Manas International Airport in Kyrgyzstan while en route to Imam Khomeini International Airport, Tehran, Iran. It crashed while returning to the airport of origin after experiencing technical difficulties.
Contents
Accident
Reports state that members of the crew reported "technical issues" with the plane shortly after take off. Within 10 minutes the crew reported a severe loss of cabin pressure. When they attempted to make an emergency landing, the aircraft crashed approximately 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) from the airport runway and burst into flames. The United States Air Force sent ambulances and fire apparatus with firefighters and medical personnel from its base at the airport in response to a request for assistance. The victims included ten members of a Bishkek high school sports team, Kyrgyzstan National U18 Basketball Team.
There were 90 people on board (83 passengers and 7 crew) of whom 68 died. This makes it the deadliest aircraft accident to ever occur in Kyrgyzstan. At least 22 are reported to have survived, including 2 crew members. The victims included ten members of a Bishkek high school sports team, Kyrgyzstan National U18 Basketball Team.
Investigation
The Interstate Aviation Committee (MAK) attempted to retrieve data from the flight-data and cockpit voice-recorders, which were badly damaged in the fire which destroyed most of the aircraft. While disassembling the casing, both the mechanisms of the tape recorder and the tape media in the voice recorder were found in damaged condition, but the MAK attempted to read the data from the damaged media.
The MAK has drawn final conclusions. The report claims that the forward left cabin door was not closed completely, and that the person who closed it was an engineer who was not listed among those (in the Cabin Attendant Manual) who were supposed to close the door. The report concludes that the aircraft originally lost cabin pressure due to this error, but that it was just a contributing factor to the crash. The plane could have landed with reduced pressure, but the pilot failed to maintain visual contact with the runway, failed to properly monitor altitude and ignored automated warnings about terrain proximity (TAWS).
It has been reported that both the captain and co-pilot have been sentenced to five years and five years and two months respectively in a penal colony for the crash.
MAK concluded that the cause of the crash was the crew allowing the altitude reduction of the aircraft at night to a height below the minimum height during a visual approach for an emergency landing at the airport of departure due to depressurization caused by a failed left front door seal, which led to the collision of the aircraft with the ground, the destruction of the aircraft structure followed by fire and death. The disaster was the result of a combination of the following factors:
Aircraft information
The crashed plane first flew on 16 June 1980 and was delivered on 1 July of the same year to Air New Zealand as ZK-NAS. In 1995, it was sold to Copa Airlines, and in 2003 was again sold to Phoenix Aviation. In 2005, Phoenix Aviation was rebranded as AVE.com, and in April 2006, it changed hands to Itek Air.
Itek Air, along with all air carriers certified by the authorities with responsibility for regulatory oversight of Kyrgyzstan, is included in a European Union list of banned airlines for safety concerns and is therefore not permitted to fly over the territory of the EU. In May 2008, EX-009 passed a full technical inspection.