A WORRIED Iranian airline pilot asked passengers to start praying after his plane was hit by a technical glitch today, highlighting once again the notorious record of Tehran's aircraft.
The Aseman Airlines Boeing plane had taken off from Tehran airport after a six-hour delay, but had to return following a technical fault, the ISNA news agency quoted a passenger as recounting.
"The plane took off at 0015 in the morning and had to land back in Tehran after 45 minutes," the passenger said.
"The pilot told the passengers 'the plane is facing a technical problem and has to return. So please pray'."
Iran has been under years of international sanctions hampering its ability to buy modern planes from major manufacturers, such as Boeing and Airbus, or spare parts, and has suffered a number of air disasters over the past decade.
Its civil and military fleet is made up of ancient aircraft in very poor condition due to their age, and lack of maintenance.
In July it suffered one of its worst air disasters when a Caspian Airlines plane, a Russian Tupolev 154, crashed near Qazvin, northwest of Tehran, killing all 168 people on board.
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#2
Unfortunately for the PIC, it, apparently, was not a GE part that was needed. Otherwise, there would have been boxes and boxes of 'em in the maintenance department....
#4
It worked! Good call, pilot. They need to note this in the after-action report and recommend the procedure to the entire fleet. This new method of divine intervention has potential to save millions in maintenance costs alone.
TEHRAN: Iran welcomes the idea of exchanging nuclear fuel and is ready to co-operate with Western powers, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said last night.
Mr Ahmadinejad hailed what he said was a change in the West's approach to Iran's nuclear program from "confrontation to co-operation".
"We welcome fuel exchange, nuclear co-operation, building of power plants and reactors, and we are ready to co-operate," he said in the city of Mashhad.
The speech came as Iran responded to a UN plan on shipping the country's low-enriched uranium abroad for further enrichment. The plan curtails any covert nuclear arms-making abilities by Iran.
A hardline Iranian newspaper reported yesterday that Tehran would propose two amendments to the UN deal under which most of Tehran's low-enriched uranium would be sent abroad for conversion into nuclear fuel.
The deal drafted by the International Atomic Energy Agency envisages 75 per cent of Tehran's low-enriched uranium stock being sent abroad for higher processing and conversion into fuel for an internationally supervised research reactor in Tehran, according to Javan.
Tehran would propose two amendments to this deal, the paper said. Iran would offer its stock of LEU "gradually" in several batches rather than sending out the full 75 per cent in one go, the paper said, quoting an unnamed source.
Secondly, Iran wanted to receive highly enriched uranium fuel at the same time as it hands over its LEU stock "as per a formula to be calculated by the IAEA based on the need of the Tehran reactor".
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[Al Arabiya Latest] Dozens of relatives of prominent reformers and other people detained after Iran's disputed election gathered outside the prosecutor's office in Tehran on Wednesday to call for their release, a witness said.
Family members, including wives of people arrested after the June vote, held pictures of detainees, among them former deputy interior minister Mostafa Tajzadeh and former government spokesman Abdullah Ramezanzadeh, the witness said.
The gathering was peaceful and there was no sign of police, the witness said. The relatives did not chant slogans, but called for the detainees to be freed in writing on placards.
"The political court should be closed down," one placard said. "Where is the judiciary's independence?" asked another.
[Al Arabiya Latest] The Lebanese troops early Wednesday found and dismantled four rockets near the border with Israel, a day after a rocket hit the Jewish state, a senior Lebanese army official said. The attack Tuesday drew a rapid response from Israeli artillery in a brief flare-up across the tense border that caused no casualties.
A security source in Lebanon said eight rockets fired from Israel then hit near the border village of Hula. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
An Israeli military spokeswoman later confirmed that "artillery had opened fire on the sector from which the Katyusha rocket was fired."
She said the army considered the attack as "serious, and considers that responsibility for it falls on the Lebanese government."
The Lebanese official said the rockets, discovered on Wednesday, were placed in a building under construction in the Houla area from where Tuesday's rocket was launched. He said three of the four Katyusha rockets found were ready to be fired. He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with military regulations.
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Posted by: Fred ||
10/29/2009 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
