Iran Air Flight 277
Boeing 727-286Adv · Crashed following double engine flame-out in icing conditions
From Mehrabad International Airport (THR) to Urmia Airport (OMH)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's fatalities and injuries. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA11WA069
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Unknown · led by another country; figures from NTSB notifications
- Event fatalities
- 78 · all aircraft and ground Narrative disagrees
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- 105
- Survivors
- 27
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- 27
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Airline
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Not recorded
Boeing 727-286Adv
- Flight
- IR277
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 727
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- EP-IRP
- Operator
- Iran Air
- Onboard fatalities
- 78
- Route
- From Mehrabad International Airport (THR)To Urmia Airport (OMH)
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Non-U.S., Commercial
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Approach · IFR missed approach
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Unknown or undetermined
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Personnel issues › Miscellaneous
From the investigation findings the Wikipedia article reports, sorted into the NTSB's cause areas with AI assistance.
Approximate · Coordinates from the Wikipedia article; not checked against an investigation report.
From the Wikipedia article
Iran Air Flight 277 was a scheduled Iran Air flight from Mehrabad International Airport, Tehran to Urmia Airport, Iran. On 9 January 2011, the Boeing 727 serving the flight crashed after an aborted approach to Urmia Airport in poor weather. Of the 105 people on board, 78 were killed. The official investigation concluded that icing conditions and incorrect engine management by the crew led to a double engine flame-out, loss of altitude and impact with the ground.
Accident
Flight 277 had taken off from Mehrabad International Airport, Tehran, at 18:15 local time (15:15 UTC), more than two hours later than scheduled because of poor weather at the destination.
At around 19:00 local time (16:00 UTC), while on approach to Urmia Airport, the crew initiated a missed approach procedure and announced its intention to return to Tehran. At the time, the weather at Urmia was poor, with the lowest clouds at 1500 ft and visibility of 800 m in heavy snow.
Contact with the flight was lost shortly after. The aircraft crashed near the village of Tarmani, around 15 km south-east of Urmia Airport, breaking into multiple sections. Of the 96 passengers and 9 crew on board, only 27 survived. It was the deadliest civil aviation accident in 2011.
Investigation and cause
Investigation
Iran's Civil Aviation Authority (CAA.IRI) opened an inquiry into the crash. The day after the accident, both the flight's cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and the flight data recorder (FDR) were recovered and taken to Tehran for analysis.
In 2017, CAO.IRI published its final accident report. From its analysis, it emerged that after starting its final approach to Urmia Airport's runway 21 from an altitude of 7000 ft – Urmia Airport being at an elevation of 4300 ft – a navigational error by the flight crew meant that the aircraft failed to establish itself on the instrument landing system. Descending through 5900 ft and having never made visual contact with the runway, the crew elected to go around. The missed approach procedure started normally, with the aircraft climbing to 8800 ft.
Investigators believe the aircraft encountered severe icing conditions, which caused disruption of the airflow and loss of engine thrust. The aircraft started to descend and entered a turn that momentarily reached 41° bank angle, causing the activation of the stick shaker. Despite application of full thrust, engines No. 1 and 3 began to run down. As the aircraft descended through 7000 ft, the flight engineer could be heard announcing that both engines had failed. Subsequent attempts to restart them were unsuccessful. During the last moments of the flight, flaps were retracted and the airspeed progressively decayed; at 4400 ft, just 100 ft above terrain, the aircraft was flying at 112 kn with 21° right bank. The last recorded airspeed value was 69 kn. The aircraft struck terrain at 4307 ft above mean sea level (MSL).
The report concluded that the main causes of the accident were severe icing conditions and inappropriate actions by the flight crew. Obsolete on-board systems, absence of suitable simulators for adverse weather conditions, failure to follow standard operating procedures, and inadequate crew resource management were cited as contributing factors.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Iran Air Flight 277” (revision 1367502824, retrieved 2026-09-18) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out. Read the article
NTSB narrative
On January 9, 2011, an Iran Air Boeing B727-200, registration EP-IRP, crashed during missed approach to Orumiyeh Airport (OITR), Urmia, Iran. Of the 105 passengers and crew onboard, 78 were fataly injured and 27 received serious injuries. The airplane was enroute from Mehrabad International Airport (OIII), Tehran, Iran.
The investigation is being conducted by the Civil Aviation Organization of Iran.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
Wikipedia article: Iran Air Flight 277
- Article
- Iran Air Flight 277
- Revision
- 1367502824 · 2026-08-03 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q951088
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record DCA11WA069
- Event ID
- 20110613X22328
- Case number
- DCA11WA069
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "Iran Air Flight 277" (page 30388139, revision 1367502824); merged with NTSB case DCA11WA069 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- Wikipedia infobox: date
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site
- Map position
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia article coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports); gaps and aircraft details from NTSB record DCA11WA069
- Operation
- airline flight number in the infobox
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia infobox: aircraft fatalities
- Ground fatalities
- Wikipedia: not stated in the Wikipedia infobox
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (2)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Iran Air Flight 277" and NTSB case DCA11WA069, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this event outside the United States Wikipedia's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.