Updated February 19, 2018 05:54:59

Photo: The plane was an ATR-72, a twin-engine turboprop used for short-distance flights. (Wikimedia Commons, file photo)

All 65 passengers and crew are feared dead in a plane crash in central Iran after the domestic flight came down in bad weather in a mountainous region.

A spokesman for Iranian carrier Aseman Airlines had told state television everyone was killed, but the airline then issued a statement saying it could not reach the crash site and could not "accurately and definitely confirm" everyone died.

The airline had also initially said 60 passengers and six crew were on board the twin-engined turboprop ATR 72 that was flying to the south-western city of Yasuj. But it later said there were a total of 65 people on board, as one passenger had missed the flight.

The crash of the ATR-72 marks yet another fatal aviation disaster for Iran, which for years was barred from buying airplane parts for needed maintenance due to Western sanctions over its contested nuclear program.

The Aseman-operated plane crashed near the town of Semirom after taking off from Tehran's Mehrabad airport, emergency services spokesman Mojtaba Khaledi told ISNA news agency.

As night approached, bad weather prevented helicopters searching the probable crash site but emergency workers were scouring the mountainous area by land, the television said.

"It is getting colder and darker and still no sign of the plane," said a television reporter accompanying rescue teams searching snow-covered areas in Mount Dena, which has more than 40 peaks higher than 4,000 metres.

Media reports said the plane disappeared from radar screens 50 minutes after taking off from Mehrabad airport in the south-west of the capital.

Photo: Relatives of a passenger believed to have been killed in the plane crash gather near the town of Semirom. (Reuters: Tasnim News Agency)

Worried relatives of passengers gathered at Yasuj airport.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani issued messages of condolences.

The President asked the transport minister to lead an investigation into the crash.

Aircraft had been 'grounded' for seven years

Photo: Emergency workers are scouring the mountainous area by land. (Reuters: Tasnim News Agency)

Aseman Airlines, owned by Iran's civil service pension foundation, is a semi-private air carrier headquartered in Tehran and specialises in flights to remote airfields across the country. It also flies internationally.

It is Iran's third-largest airline by fleet size, behind state carrier Iran Air and Mahan Air.

The carrier has a fleet of 29 aircraft, including six ATR aircraft, according to FlightRadar24, a plane-tracking website.

The ATR-72 that crashed on Sunday had been built in 1993, Aseman Airlines chief executive Ali Abedzadeh told state TV.

On Instagram, Aseman Airlines highlighted the doomed aircraft in October, saying it had been "grounded" for seven years but would be "repaired and will be operational after checking and testing".

It wasn't clear what led to the grounding, though Iran only recently regained access to the airplane parts market after the nuclear deal.

European airplane manufacturer ATR, a Toulouse, France-based partnership of Airbus and Italy's Leonardo SpA, said it had no immediate information about the crash.

Decades of sanctions aged passenger planes

Under decades of international sanctions, Iran's commercial passenger aircraft fleet has aged, with air accidents occurring regularly in recent years.

The main points in the nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers aimed at curbing Tehran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

Following the 2015 landmark nuclear deal with world powers, Iran signed deals with both Airbus and Boeing to buy scores of passenger planes worth tens of billions of dollars.

In April 2017, ATR sealed a $536-million ($677 million) sale with Iran Air for at least 20 aircraft.

Chicago-based Boeing also signed a $3 billion ($3.79 billion) deal that month to sell 30 737 MAX aircraft to Aseman Airlines.

Home to 80 million people, Iran represents one of the last untapped aviation markets in the world.

However, Western analysts are sceptical that there is demand for so many jets or available financing for deals worth billions of dollars.

Iran has suffered a series of major aviation disasters in recent decades.

The last major crash in Iran happened in January 2011, when an Iran Air Boeing 727 broke to pieces on impact while trying an emergency landing in a snowstorm in north-western Iran, killing at least 77 people.

In July 2009, a Russian-made jetliner crashed in north-western Iran shortly after taking off from Tehran, killing all 168 on board.

A Russian-made Ilyushin 76 carrying members of the Revolutionary Guard crashed in the mountains of south-eastern Iran in February 2003, killing 302 people.

In February 1993, an Iranian airliner with 132 people aboard collided with an air force jet after take off from Tehran's main airport, killing everyone on the two aircraft.

And in July 1988, the USS Vincennes in the Strait of Hormuz mistook an Iran Air flight heading to Dubai for an attacking fighter jet, shooting down the plane and killing all 290 people aboard.

Reuters/AP

Topics: air-and-space, world-politics, foreign-affairs, iran-islamic-republic-of

First posted February 18, 2018 20:44:51