Tehran: Investigators on Monday found the “black box” from a Turkish private jet that crashed in an Iranian mountain range on its way from the UAE to Istanbul, killing all 11 people on board — likely including a Turkish bride-to-be and her bachelorette party.
Authorities have so far recovered 10 bodies from the crash site in the Zagros Mountains outside of the city of Shahr-e Kord, some 370 kilometres south of Iran’s capital, Tehran, according to a report by the state-run IRNA news agency.
Heavy rains and wind in the mountain range since the crash Sunday made it impossible for helicopters to land in the area, though officials hoped to bring the bodies down from the mountain later in the day, IRNA said.
Families of the victims arrived on Monday in Shahr-e-Kord, accompanied by Turkish diplomats, IRNA reported.
The flight took off on Sunday from Sharjah International Airport in the UAE. A little over an hour into the flight, the aircraft rapidly gained altitude and then dropped drastically within minutes, according to FlightRadar24, a flight-tracking website.
It remains unclear what caused the crash, though a witness told state television the Bombardier CL604 was on fire before it hit the mountain.
Finding the aircraft’s “black box” will help investigators trying to piece together what happened. That equipment, typically painted in a bright colour to allow searchers to easily find it, records cockpit conversations and radio transmissions, as well as other data from a flight.
Sharjah civil aviation authorities said in a statement late Sunday night that the plane’s eight passengers were six Turks and two Spaniards. Three others were the flight crew.
“The plane did not apply for maintenance procedures while on the ground of the airport,” their statement said.
The flight likely carried Mina Basaran, the 28-year-old daughter of the chairman of Basaran Investment Holding, and her friends who had celebrated her bachelorette party in nearby Dubai. Turkey’s Transport Ministry said the aircraft belonged to Basaran Investment Holding, which AP has not been able to reach since the crash.
Basaran recently posted photographs on the photo-sharing app Instagram of what appeared to be her bachelorette party, which included eight women. Iranian authorities previously said the flight’s passengers were all young women.
Among those photographs was an image of the plane posted three days ago. In it, Basaran posed on the tarmac carrying flowers, wearing a denim jacket reading “Mrs Bride” and the hashtag “#bettertogether.” In another picture, she holds heart-shaped balloons inside the plane.
On Saturday, Basaran posted a picture with seven smiling friends from a Dubai resort. The last videos posted to her account showed her enjoying a concert by the British pop star Rita Ora at a popular Dubai nightclub.
Sunday’s crash came less than a month after an Iranian ATR-72, a twin-engined turboprop used for short regional flights, crashed in southern Iran, killing all 65 people on-board.
