Tehran, Dec 18, IRNA -- An Iran Air passenger plane en route to Isfahan in central Iran made an emergency landing at the Mehrabad International Airport here Tuesday, a press report said Wednesday.

The Persian daily 'Qods' quoted a passenger identified as Dr. Ja'fari as saying that the Flight 315 with 300 passengers aboard took off after a 40 minute delay at 14:30 pm from Tehran.

"Shortly after take-off the pilot announced the delay had been caused by some technical fault with one of the automatic systems of the plane," said the passenger.

"A few minutes later the pilot again announced that the second automatic system was also out of control and we had to return to Tehran airport," he added.

Ja'fari said the plane was one of those second-hand aircraft purchased by the Ministry of Road and Transportation from Turkey.

Meanwhile, the Managing Director of Iran's Civil Aviation Organization (CAO) Reza Ja'farzadeh in an interview with the Iranian Student News Agency (ISNA) rejected reports that the plane was second-hand and purchased from Turkey.

The plane took off on its way to Isfahan at 16:23 after being repaired.

The Civil Aviation Organization bought six used Airbus-310 airplanes from Turkey last year in defiance of strong oppositions voiced by various scientific, academic and technical centers within the country to the purchase of second-hand passenger planes.

Although the government spent millions of dollars on these aircraft, they could never be used due to serious technical problems.