Three years later, the airline was "on the verge of bankruptcy" and the managing director and most managerial staff were replaced, the website, which gives the company slogan "we care about you", says.

"Kish Air's workforce consists of approximately 440 employees ...which are mostly retired Air Force experts," it said, adding that the company had four medium-range Soviet-designed TU-154Ms and four short-range Fokker-50s.

The plane that crashed was one of the Fokker-50s, a Dutch-built turboprop with a capacity of up to 50 passengers and an excellent safety record, according to the Aviation Safety Network.

On September 6 one of the airline's Tupolevs crashed after hitting a tree when it tried to land in heavy fog at Minsk, Belarus, on a flight from Tehran to Copenhagen, but none of the nearly 40 people aboard were injured, according to airport authorities at the time.

In the latest figures on its website, the airline said it operates around 160 domestic flights each month to Iran's main cities, including Tehran, Shiraz, Mashhad, Abadan, Ispahan and Bandar Abbas.

Its 100-plus international flights each month operate between Kish and the United Arab Emirates, and from Ispahan, around 320 kilometres (200 miles) south of Tehran, to the UAE and Syria.

Kish is an Iranian Gulf island which is run largely as a free trading zone but is also a popular resort with a reputation of being more liberal than mainland Iran.

WAR.WIRE