Iran's aviation regulation seen as a factor in air crashesIran often blames sanctions for preventing aircraft upgrades. But one industry official faults politically driven regulators who fail to do their job, and who bend the rules for well-connected airline. (for $ obviously lol)
By Borzou Daragahi
September 15, 2009
Reporting from Beirut - When the managing director of a small, trouble-prone Iranian airline won official permission in March to lease a couple of aging Russian-made airplanes, the country's small circle of aviation professionals gossiped about the strings he must have pulled to get the government's approval.
And when one of the planes burst aflame on the runway in late July, killing the executive, Mehdi Dadpei, his son and 14 others, few in the industry were surprised.
"Aria was famous for not adhering to safety standards for years," said an Iranian aviation industry insider, who spoke extensively to The Times on condition of anonymity. "Every time they had a problem, the managing director knew someone high up in the government who made it possible for Aria to continue as before."
In the wake of the crash, a government official said the airline's permission to operate had been revoked.
Iranian officials have long accused the West of playing politics with people's lives by imposing sanctions that prevent upgrades to the country's aging aircraft fleet. On Saturday, an Iranian aviation official called the sanctions an "act against humanity." But the aviation insider charged that authorities in Tehran were also to blame for a recent spate of deadly crashes.
The airline industry official, who asked that his name and his company not be published out of fear for his personal and job security, accused politically motivated regulators of failing to adequately inspect and publicize aviation accidents, and of bending rules to accommodate well-connected airlines.
"It is apparent that many of our safety concerns and problems are due to U.S. sanctions," said the official, whose name and title The Times independently verified. "But when you look closer, you will note that mismanagement on behalf of the Iran civil aviation authorities is to blame for a majority of what is so sadly taking place."
He provided a rare insider view on a contentious issue between Iran and the West, as well as the inner workings of a key industry in an opaque country.
Iran has experienced 14 fatal civilian and military aviation accidents since 2000, a figure experts describe as one of the worst in the world. Since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to office in 2005, there have been at least seven fatal accidents.
"To have fatal accidents at 1.5 a year means Iran is experiencing 10% of world [aircraft hull] losses," said a London-based aviation accident investigator who probes crashes all over the world. He spoke on condition of anonymity. "That's well above the average."
In addition to the two major crashes that killed 184 people in July, a series of smaller aviation incidents over the last few weeks has raised concerns about the state of Iran's civil aviation. On Sept. 6, a Russian-made Tupolev-154 jet belonging to an unnamed airline made an emergency landing shortly after takeoff in Tehran because of unspecified technical problems, an official told state television.
Five days earlier, an Iran Air training plane crashed, seriously injuring the pilot, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported, while another training plane crashed Aug. 15, killing two.
"Overall, every week we hear of incidents that are far above the norms of the industry," the airline industry insider said. "They keep it secret."
In terms of safety, the Iranian airline executive said, the aviation industry is "at the lowest point" in its recent history. Human error, mostly by pilots, and not mechanical problems, was behind most of Iran's aviation troubles.
The problems are exacerbated by regulators at the country's Civil Aviation Organization who don't aggressively investigate accidents or make the results of inquiries available to the public or to airlines, and decline to blacklist incompetent pilots or politically connected airlines.
"There's a new approach to air safety worldwide based on openness, reporting, predicting incidents and sharing information," said Philip Butterworth-Hayes, editor of the British-based Air Traffic Management Insight, a biweekly newsletter. "None of those figure very strongly in Iran's civil aviation culture."
The Aria Air crash illustrated the extent to which politics has begun creeping into industry. Because of high demand for air travel, rules are bent to accommodate airlines with safety lapses, the insider charged.
Regulators previously pulled the airline's license "as its fleet was outdated," but allowed it to start business again under a slightly different name, Mohammad Ali Ilkhani, acting chief of the CAO, told the semiofficial Mehr news agency after the crash.
Ilkhani said Aria Air's permission to operate had again been revoked.
"The norm is who you know and how high in the government is your backup," the insider said.
Poor government policies also put pressure on Iranian airlines to cut corners that affect safety, he said.
Even as operating costs increase, government regulators keep domestic airfares artificially low to please the public, and pressure airlines to operate money-losing flights to small towns and secondary airports with few passengers to "keep the parliament members from that area happy," said the industry insider.
"Authorities' indifference to repeated requests by airline firms to raise ticket prices has had an effect on recent plane crashes," Mehdi Aliyari, the head of the professional association of air transport companies, told the newspaper Jomhouri Eslami in late July. "When the government artificially keeps the price of air tickets fixed and airline companies' warnings on raising ticket prices are ignored, air accidents are not implausible."
Some Iranian officials say the country increasingly relies on Russian planes because U.S. sanctions on Iran forbid it to buy new Boeing or Airbus aircraft. Both the Aria Air crash and the July 15 crash of a Caspian Airlines flight that killed all 168 people aboard involved Russian planes.
Aviation professionals said they didn't think Russian planes were inherently any worse than the Boeing and Airbus planes used in the West.
"If they're flown properly, they're like tanks," Butterworth-Hayes said. "They're incredibly robust airplanes."
But others said the post-sales training, support and parts provided for Russian aircraft were far weaker than those for Western planes.
"When an airline is operating Russian-type aircraft, the safety level of its operations will definitely suffer because the operations and technical safety will not be as good as an airline with an all-Western fleet," the Iranian airline source said.
Sat, 12 Sep 2009 14:09:27 GMT
Iran's Civil Aviation Organization (CAO) has slammed the unilateral US sanctions against the country's civil aviation as an 'act against humanity.'
Speaking to Press TV, CAO spokesman Reza Jafarzadeh said on Saturday that "Although these sanctions have resulted in the development of Iranian specialists, nevertheless, this act by the US is against humanity and contrary to all international conventions."
Jafarzadeh explained that the sanctions "imposed after 1979 Islamic Revolution deposed the pro-US monarchy" were imposed on the pretext of punishing or influencing the Iranian government.
However, he explained that, instead of hurting the government, which has remained steadfast in its policies, the sanctions have harmed the civilians who have been paying the price, by having to fly in ancient aircraft, with a shortage of spare parts.
"It is not only Iranians who fly on Iranian airlines. People from all over the world -- Asia, Africa, Europe and even the USA -- fly on Iran's domestic and international flights. Yet, because of the US sanctions, they are content with old aircraft, without the latest safety features," said Jafarzadeh.
"Furthermore, the sanctions have damaged Boeing, which used to be main source of aircraft for Iran's flag carrier, Iran Air."
"The US government has not thought carefully about the consequences of this act," he elaborated.
Jafarzadeh revealed that, in order to show Iran's good faith and at the request of the large Iranian diaspora in the US, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had ordered the CAO in 2006 to arrange for direct flights from Iran to the US.
In the 1970's, Iran Air operated a non-stop flight from Tehran to New York, with its extra-long-range Boeing 747SP aircraft.
The airline still maintains these venerable aircraft in its fleet and could operate the same route again.
The CAO contacted the US authorities through appropriate channels, but, after more than 3 years, Washington has not responded to the request, he added.
Although, as Jafarzadeh says, the sanctions have made Iran more self-reliant in maintaining and overhauling wide-body aircraft such as the Boeing 747, aircraft have limited life-spans and they cannot be operated for ever and a fleet renewal is long overdue.
ZAP/MD
And here's where the nuke's at:
American planes for Iranian peace?Maryam Sinaiee, Foreign Correspondent
* Last Updated: September 14. 2009 2:54PM UAE / September 14. 2009 10:54AM GMT
Iranian media say the United States offered 20 Boeing aircraft in an attempt to soothe Tehran amid an impasse on its nuclear programme. And though it might never have happened, it quickly inflamed the republic’s hardliners.
TEHRAN // An unconfirmed Iranian report claims the US has offered to sell 20 new Boeing aircraft and aeroplane parts worth $2.5 billion (Dh9bn) to Iran as a show of good will in order to put an end to the long-running disputes over Iranian assets frozen in the US and encourage direct talks with the US.
“The messages from the US president to Iran about delivering the planes were sent after the finalisation of the results of the presidential elections,” Fars News Agency on Saturday quoted an “informed source” as saying.
The source also told Fars News Agency that some of the aircraft and spare parts were being delivered to Iran through Venezuela.
The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, visited Tehran for a second time after Iran’s June presidential elections last week during which he met with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The planes and spare parts are to be paid for from the Iranian assets in the US that were frozen nearly 30 years ago following the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran by radical students, the source claimed.
Mohammad Ali Ilkhani, the head of the Civil Aviation Organisation, however, was quoted by Mehr News Agency on Saturday as denying that there had been any proposal to sell aircraft to Iran. Yesterday, the organisation’s spokesman, Reza Jafarzadeh, was quoted by Fars News Agency as saying that his organisation had yet not received any “orders or reports about the details of [the US] pledge to deliver the aircraft” and declined to make any further comments regarding the subject.
Whether or not the US puts an end to its embargo on Iran’s aviation industry by delivering new aircraft to replace its dilapidated fleet, does not seem to convince Iran’s hardliners of American good will towards Iran.
“The US statesmen and President Obama himself should not doubt even for a minute that the Iranian nation and officials are not prepared as much as a grain to make any concessions regarding their four preconditions [for starting direct talks],” the hardline Jomhuri Eslami newspaper wrote in an editorial yesterday, while saying the number of planes involved was 16.
The editorial said the conditions required for rapprochement with the US included an apology for interfering in Iranian affairs during the 25 years before the Islamic Revolution and for supporting the Shah, a pledge not to interfere in Iran’s affairs, the release of the frozen Iranian assets in the US and a pledge not to interfere with Iran’s nuclear activities or its relationship with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
“Mr Obama has resorted to such a scheme probably because of Iran’s need to [have new] passenger planes and thinks that with this candy stick he can sweeten the mouths of Iranian officials and gobble up $12 billion of the assets of the Iranian nation,” the paper wrote.
Iran continues to demand that the nuclear issue be excluded from talks with the United States and other western powers.
“The Iranians have a responsibility to the international community to walk away from their illicit nuclear weapons programme and that will be the focus from the US side in talks,” the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said on Saturday while welcoming Iran’s agreement to sit down to direct talks with the six world powers.
“This may not have been a topic they wanted to be brought up, but I can assure you it’s a topic that we’ll bring up,” Mr Gibbs added. “That’s our goal.”
The remarks were made only a few hours after Iran’s foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, said there was a possibility of talks with western powers based on the contents of Iran’s package of proposals, “should conditions be ripe”, and his avowal that no compromise was to be made regarding the country’s uranium enrichment programme.
President Ahmadinejad reiterated yesterday that Iran does not intend to talk to the West about anything other than what was listed in Iran’s five-page proposal for talks last week.
“Iran will not negotiate about its inalienable right, but we are prepared to talk about international co-operation for solving global economic and security issues and believe these problems cannot be resolved without participation of everyone,” he said during a ceremony held to receive the credentials of Simon Gass, the new British ambassador to Tehran.
Yesterday, the Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, said Ankara was ready to host talks between Iran and world powers on Tehran’s latest proposal. According to a press release from Iran’s National Security Council quoted by IRNA, Mr Davutoglu made the offer during his meeting with Saeed Jalili, Iran’s top nuclear negotiator.
The minister, who was wrapping up a two-day visit, hoped the negotiations would start “as soon as possible and said Turkey is ready to host the talks”, the statement issued after he met Mr Jalili said.
The Iranian package presented to the six world powers – the UN, US, Britain, China, France and Germany – proposes talks on global nuclear disarmament among other things, but makes no reference to any discussion about the country’s uranium enrichment programme.
Nice try lol
