announced it was expelling all Russian pilots working in Iran while insisting that Iran had plenty of pilots to go around.
Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani Saturday announced the planned investigation of the pilot emigration. He gave no numbers but said a large volume of senior pilots have emigrated to other countries. He said the Majlis investigation would come up with a plan to encourage Iranian pilots to stay.
Just four weeks earlier, Transport Minister Hamid Behbahani announced that Russian commercial pilots working in Iran had been given two months to get out.
Behbahani indicated the Russians had to go for two reasons. He said Iran had enough pilots to fly its own planes. But he didn’t say why Iran hired the Russians in the first place if that was true. Second, he cited recent aircraft crashes in which Russian pilots were at the controls and blamed for the crashes.
Some thought the new order was more a reflection of increased strains between Iran and Russia. Moscow has shown growing willingness to impose more sanctions on Iran at the United Nations. And it has continued to drag its feet on delivering to Iran the S-300 air defense missile system Iran ordered years ago.
Behbahani said the expulsion order applied to “Russian” pilots. Iranian airlines lease many airliners from the states of the former Soviet Union. Many of them come with their local aircrews, such as Kazakh or Tajik crews. But most of the pilots are ethnic Russians who just happen to hold passports from those other countries. It wasn’t clear if Behbahani’s order applied to Russian ethnic pilots or to Russian passport-holding pilots.
In July of last year, an Ilyushin Il-62 jet landed hard at the airport in Mashhad. Officials said the plane touched down at about 200 miles per hour when the maximum landing speed is 165 mph. Ahmad Majidi, deputy transport minister, said the plane also touched down at the mid-point of the runway, rather than near the start of the runway. The plane sped off the end of the runway and did not stop for a kilometer. Sixteen people were killed.
This January, a Tupolev passenger plane belonging to an Iranian airline, Taban, caught fire in the tail as it landed at Mashhad. Forty-six people suffered minor injuries.
Both planes were flown by ethnic Russian pilots. The first crash appeared reasonably to be attributable to the pilot, but the second crash wasn’t so clear.
Behbahani said President Ahmadi-nejad ordered the Transport Ministry to set a two-month deadline for the removal of all Russian pilots from Iran.
“When our country itself possesses plenty of professional and specialist pilots, there is no need to bring in pilots from abroad,” Behbahani said.
But the Islamic Labor News Agency said Behbahani added that Ahmadi-nejad ordered the Transport Ministry to prepare a training program to replace the Russian pilots.