Private plane from Sharjah to Turkey crashes with 11 people onboard

The National -- A private plane flying from Sharjah to Istanbul carrying a group of young women crashed in Iran on Sunday night during a heavy rain, killing all 11 people on board.

The plane was owned by Başaran Holding and was widely reported to have been carrying the group's heir Mina Başaran, who had been in Dubai with friends to celebrate her bachelorette party.

The Bombardier Challenger C600 series was carrying eight passengers and three crew members who died on impact, Iran's ISNA news agency said.

An emergency services spokesman said the plane crashed in a mountainous area down near Shahr-e Kord city, some 370 kilometres south of Tehran, and caught fire.

Iranian state television quoted Mojtaba Khaledi, the spokesman of the country’s emergency management organization, as saying the plane hit a mountain near Shahr-e Kord and burst into flames. Shahr-e Kord is some 370 kilometers (230 miles) south of the capital, Tehran.

Khaledi later told a website associated with state TV that local villagers had reached the site in the Zagros Mountains and found only badly burned bodies and no survivors. He said DNA tests would be needed to identify the dead.

Villagers near the crash earlier said they saw flames coming from the plane’s engine before the crash, according to a report by Iran’s state-run judiciary news agency Mizan.

The plane took off around 4:41 p.m. (1311 GMT; 9:11 a.m. EST) Sunday and reached a cruising altitude of just over 35,000 feet, according to FlightRadar24, a flight-tracking website. At around 6:01 p.m. (1431 GMT; 10:31 a.m. EST), something appears to have gone wrong with the flight as it rapidly gained altitude and then dropped drastically within minutes, data published by the website showed.

Istanbul's Daily Sabah reported that Ms Başaran was due to marry at the end of March.

Her public Instagram page showed her standing next to an aircraft with the unique tail code TC-TRB - the same as the plane that went down and images from inside the aircraft.

Images also showed her relaxing with seven friends at a Dubai Marina hotel resort on Saturday.

The Başaran Investment Holding operates in tourism, finance, construction, tourism, aviation, cement, and energy. It also owns two luxury hotels Ramada Resort Bodrum and Ramada Plaza Trabzon, Turkish newspapers said.

Earlier in February, an Iranian ATR-72, a twin-engine turboprop used for short-distance regional flying, crashed in southern Iran, killing all 65 people on board.