Whilst the Il-76 is a cargo aircraft, we have seen several "conversions" into pax configuration. Most notable is the Il-76 of Iraqi Airways which has carried pax to Saudi for the Hadj season. I would be taking a guess here, and say that the Iranian Il-76 is in the same situation as the Iraqi Il-76. Being used for the passage of devotees for Hadj in Saudi, or maybe even within Iran, as this is the most holy period on the Islamic calendar. Isn't Mashhad one of the holy cities in Iran? Cheers Scotty ----- Original Message ----- From: David Ross According to JP 2001/02, all of the Iranian airlines operating IL-76's = have them in freight configuration. David Ross http://damiross.go.cc http://home.earthlink.net/~damiross/airlines.html http://home.earthlink.net/~damiross/books.html ----- Original Message -----=20 From: www.justplanes.com=20 To: AIRLINE@LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU=20 Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2002 8:42 Subject: [AIRLINE] Interesting report! First they reported it to be a Tupolev 154, now it's an IL76 and = perhaps slightly overloaded ? TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- A Russian-made Iranian airliner was forced to = make an emergency landing shortly after takeoff due to a fire on board, = an official newspaper reported Monday. The state-owned daily, Iran, said all 230 people on board the = Ilyushin-76 airliner were unhurt in Sunday's fire. The aircraft was built to carry cargo but was modified to transport = people, the daily said. The domestic flight started from the city of = Mashhad.=20