Media reports said the type of aircraft involved in the crash was a Tupolev 154. The three-engine Tupolev 154 is the aging workhorse of Russia's commercial fleet, at one time carrying about half of all Russian air passengers. It was designed as the Soviet counterpart to the Boeing 727 and the European-made Trident, but with the added ability to operate from short, rough runways. About 1,000 were produced.
Although a popular aircraft, it has had a checkered history and has been involved in about 30 air disasters since it was created in 1968. The last plane crash in Iran involving a Tupolev plane occurred in 2006, according to the Web site airdisaster.com. Source: CNN
The Iranian newspaper Hamshahri reported that the plane was flying from Tehran and was headed to Yerevan, Armenia. There were reportedly 153 passengers and 15 crew members. The plane has been identified as flight number 7908. It reportedly crashed 16 minutes after takeoff.
A Russian-made Tupolev Iranian plane, carrying 168 people, crashed shortly after take-off in northwestern Iran yesterday, killing everyone on board and creating an enormous smoldering crater. It has been reported that 10 members of the country's youth judo team were aboard the Caspian Airlines plane, several sources including Press TV reported. The network said the dead included eight athletes and two coaches. Videos of the crash site showed a huge crater in the earth scattered with charred pieces of the plane and tattered passports. Military forces are reportedly now searching for the plane's data recorder and cockpit voice recorder to determine the cause of the crash. The plane went down near the village of Jannatabad near Qazvin, 90 miles northwest of Tehran, at 11:33 am on Wednesday.
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