An Iranian military Boeing 707 cargo plane crashed on Monday while trying to land west of Tehran, killing 15 crew members on board and leaving one survivor, according to media reports.
The decades-old jetliner was reportedly either attempting an emergency landing or mistakenly tried to land at the wrong airport at around 8:30 a.m. local time at Fath Airport, an airfield controlled by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
The airplane skidded off the runway and crashed through a perimeter fence into a residential neighborhood, according to Iranian officials.
Iranian state television aired images of smoke-charred homes and the fuselage of the aircraft. Nearby, one of its main landing gear could be seen as small fires burned around it.
The airplane was scheduled to land at the nearby Payam International Airport, about 25 miles west of Tehran, the Iranian capital. Fath Airport, where the crash occurred, has a runway that is four times shorter. Both runways are similarly aligned and have been mistaken for each other by pilots in the past, according to news reports.
