The helicopter that crashed Sunday with Iran’s president on board was American-made and may have been in service before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, according to reports.
President Ebrahim Raisi and his entourage were flying a US-made Bell 212 helicopter, according to Iran International, when it crashed into a hillside in Iran’s mountainous northwest, killing all those on board .
The group was returning from a ceremony marking the opening of a dam near the country’s border with Azerbaijan, by Al Jazeera.
The United States developed the Bell 212 in the mid-1960s in cooperation with the Canadian government, according to WeaponsSystem.net, and it first entered service in 1971. Production ended in 1998.
Until the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran was one of the United States’ closest allies in the region.
Experts said the few details provided about the accident suggest the helicopter that crashed could be between 40 and 50 years old, according to Reuters.
If true, flying such a plane is “simply suicidal,” said Julian Röpcke, editor of security and conflict policy at Bild, a German tabloid.
(Bild and Business Insider share a parent company, Axel Springer.)
Roland Dangerfield, a former British army officer and CEO of Sentinel Aviation, said the age and model of the helicopter were less important than its level of maintenance.
He told BI that planes dating back to the 1940s were flying over the UK “safely”, while in the US B-52 bombers had been around since the 1950s.
“The key is whether the helicopter has been maintained in accordance with the manufacturer’s maintenance program,” he said.
But Dangerfield said U.S. trade embargoes and restrictions on helicopter parts may have prevented the Iranian regime from maintaining the Bell 212.
Former Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif reached a similar conclusion, saying that US sanctions – which ban Iran from purchasing American-built planes and parts – could be partly responsible for the ‘accident.
Raisi’s death is just the latest incident involving helicopters and planes crashing while flying in thick fog.
Bell 212 helicopters have been involved in 432 accidents, causing 639 deaths since 1972, including Sunday’s Raïssi crash, according to an updated database held by the Flight Safety Foundation.
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