A passenger on board the doomed Aseman Airlines plane that crashed into a mountain in central Iran on Feb 18, killing all 66 people on board sent a chilling final photo to his girlfriend.
Just before take-off, the young man took a photo of one of the plane's wings and propellers, and shared it with his partner in a mobile phone chat.
He wrote: "May God protect us to arrive safe."
The Aseman Airlines plane - which had reportedly made an emergency landing earlier this month - was flying from the capital Tehran to Yasuj when it vanished from radar about 90 minutes after take-off. All 60 passengers and six crew members on the ATR 72 twin-engine turboprop plane were killed when the plane went down in bad weather.
The plane took off at about 8 a.m. local time. The journey from Tehran's Mehrabad Airport to Yasul was supposed to be roughly 2 hours, but the aircraft soon disappeared from radar screens, sparking a wide search. It was later discovered that the plane crashed into the snow-covered Dena mountain near Semirom in Isfahan province, about 300 miles south of Tehran.
People who live near the mountain where the plane crashed told local media that it appeared the plane's crew were looking for a place to land in a pasture before the crash, and they heard a "tremendous" collision between 9.30am and 9.40am. The airline confirmed that there were no survivors.
TV news footage showed devastated families waiting for updates at the airport in Yasuj and a mosque in Tehran. Relatives wept as they spoke to journalists about their loved ones and showed some of their final text messages.
A man who said he missed the doomed flight told Iran's Tabnak News Agency: "God has been really kind to me but I am so sad from the bottom of my heart for all those dear ones who lost their lives."
Reports said the captain of the doomed plane was involved in an earlier emergency where he managed to land an aircraft at Yasuj airport following an engine failure in 2013. The plane involved in Sunday morning's crash was 25 years old and had suffered a number of technical faults during its lifetime, it was reported. It was forced to make an emergency landing when it suffered a technical fault on February 5. It was said that the plane had previously been out of service for years, and was put back into operation after undergoing a major overhaul.
Iranian media published photos of the pilots, including the experienced captain, and the security guards, as well as a passenger list.
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