page_title: Transporte Aéreo Rioplatense
section_title: 1981 CL-44 crash
hierarchical_section_title: Transporte Aéreo Rioplatense / History / 1981 CL-44 crash
caption_attribution_description: Transporte Aereo Rioplatense Canadair CL-44 at Basle Airport
context_page_description: Transporte Aéreo Rioplatense SACL was an Argentine cargo airline that operated in the 1970s and 1980s.
context_section_description: In 1981 the airline was contracted to conduct a series of flights to send arms to Iran, to assist in arming Nicaraguan contras. Military equipment from Israel was shipped to Iran, in support of the latter during its war with Iraq. A total of 360 tons of arms was to be transported from Israel to Iran.
  On 18 July 1981, one of the airline's CL-44s was returning to Cyprus after making the third delivery flight to Iran. It strayed into Soviet airspace in the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic and the Soviet Air Force sent a Sukhoi Su-15 to intercept it. The Su-15 hit the CL-44's tail and it crashed near the Soviet–Turkish border, killing all four of the occupants. The Soviet Union claimed that its Su-15 pilot deliberately downed the CL-44 by aerial ramming.
caption: Canadair CL-44 of TAR at Basle Airport in October 1976. The same aircraft was brought down by the Soviet Air Force in July 1981
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