Iran President's Crash Highlights Struggle to Upgrade an Aging Fleet

[dalton99a]

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-president-helicopter-crash-1964-bell-922615c1

Iran President’s Crash Highlights Struggle to Upgrade an Aging Fleet
Ebrahim Raisi died aboard a U.S.-made helicopter model that dates to the Vietnam War era, a reflection of Tehran’s difficulty in securing parts amid sanctions
By Benoit Faucon
May 23, 2024 7:18 am ET

In July, the commander of Iran’s air force used a set of public remarks to offer some offhand praise for the country’s chopper armada. “Today, the Iranian Army Aviation functions as the largest and strongest helicopter fleet in West Asia,” Brigadier General Yousef Ghorbani said at a press conference.

The crash that killed Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and his foreign minister this past weekend tells a different story: They died aboard a decades-old U.S.-made helicopter, part of an aging fleet that has been starved of spare parts by Western sanctions.

Iranian authorities say they are still investigating what caused the crash. So far, they are attributing it to a technical failure amid mountainous terrain and foggy weather, according to Iran’s state media. A number of prominent voices inside and outside the country have blamed U.S. sanctions targeting Iran’s nuclear program, which Tehran says is peaceful.

Iranian state media named the model that crashed as the dual-rotor Bell 212, first produced in 1968, and deployed by the U.S. military during its war in Vietnam. The last Bell 212 was made in 1998.

The chopper that Raisi boarded was manufactured in 1994 by the Canadian unit of what was then known as Bell Helicopter Textron, then delivered to Iran’s air force, according to Cirium Ascend, a U.K.-based aviation analytics company.

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[harumph]

1. Poor babies...maybe if they spent less on Hammas and Hezbollah..,

they could afford new choppers.

[JI7]

2. I guess they prefer to spend on terrorism

[Crunchy Frog]

3. What I'm curious about is whose bright idea it was to fly the president and high ranking officials

in an old helicopter, over heavily forested, mountainous terrain that's known for bad weather and fog. It's not like they don't have passable roads in the area, which would seem to be much safer. It's like someone deliberately chose to transport him in the most dangerous way possible.