Ukrainian Pilot Provides Versions For Iranian President's Helicopter Incident

• 21.05.2024, 15:21

A helicopter can be easily disabled.

The American Bell-212 helicopter carrying Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi crashed near the border with Azerbaijan.

What could have happened to the helicopter of the head of Iran? Charter97.org addressed this question to the pilot-instructor and reserve colonel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Roman Svitan:

— The fact is that the helicopter of Raisi was more than 40 years old. Yes, it is American, sure. If American craft are fully serviced, then it can fly for 50 and 70 years.

If the country is under sanctions, then it is impossible to fly on them: the components and assemblies of any aircraft are overexploited. If there is not enough maintenance, especially helicopters, then they fail very quickly. This is a significant area of concern.

On the one hand, this is a device that is better than the Russian one, but there are problems without full-fledged maintenance.

In my opinion, the main version of what happened was the failure of the equipment.

— Is there a possibility that the helicopter crash is the work of foreign special services or a consequence of the internal political struggle in Iran?

— The fact is that it is very easy to disable the helicopter. This is an aircraft without a planning mechanism, unlike an airplane.

An airplane is more difficult to disable than a helicopter. There are much more mechanisms creating an emergency situation in helicopter than an airplane.

It is very difficult to track what exactly failed after the accident. That is why helicopters are very rarely used by the first persons to move.

There are some American "birds" are specially designed so that it would be almost impossible to disable them. For example, their engines are reinforced.

The head of Iran used an ordinary American helicopter. Here it's 50/50: equipment failure and sabotage.