Irans Deputy Minister of Roads and Urban Development reported on Wednesday August 20 that the average age of the Iranian air fleet exceeds 20 years, and in the past 100 years to date, two thousand Iranian have died in air accidents.
ISNA reports that Ahmad Majidi was speaking at the Air Disaster Management meeting in Kermanshah when he referred to the recent air crash in Tehran, saying 39 individuals were killed in that accident, which led to serious anxiety across the country. He added, however, that the 61 people killed in road accidents on the very same day did not trigger the same emotional response.
Majidi stated that the first flight in Iran was in 1913, and since then, 2,127 people have been killed in military and non-military flight accidents. The report indicates that 997 of those were killed in passenger flights, 860 in military airplane and helicopter accidents and 290 were killed when an Iranian passenger flight was shot down by the U.S. battleship, Vincennes.