TEHRAN (Iran News) –Secretary of Association of Iranian Airlines says the association has asked the decision-makers to increase the price of air tickets by 100% to save the industry as the industry is not concerned about decline in the number of passengers due to the hike in prices.
Speaking to ILNA, Maqsoud Asaadi Samani said that the association in its first meeting of the year with transportation coordinating council called for 100% rise in the air ticket prices but the council has not yet decided and not announced its approval of increasing the price of tickets.
Touching on doubling the price of air tickets, he said that one of the factors is devaluation of the national currency and rise in the price of forex in the market. He added that the association tabled its demand for increasing the air ticket price last year when a dollar was traded for 25,000 tomans but today even the government decides to give haval forex to the airlines will be 40,000 tomans per dollar and the dollar in the free market is traded for more than 53,000 tomans.
He added that the airlines for purchasing equipment has to buy dollar or its required forex from the exchange trade center and this dollar does not cover all required items of the airlines and the center has cut supply of dollar to the airlines with the rate of the center which is 28,500 tomans per dollar.
Asaadi Samani reiterated that they are not concerned for decline in the number of passengers after the air ticket prices are doubled, reiterating that the proposed demand for doubling the prices will fluctuating and it will be based on the demand-and-supply in the routes and in some periods even they price of tickets because of low demands may drop.
On the real price of per hour flight, he said that each per hour flight costs $48 but currently the airlines sell it to the customers for $17 and the gap between these two figures is the loss that the airliners are suffering and to compensate this loss, the government gives no subsidies to the airliners.
When he was asked why there are many applications for the launch of airlines despite such losses, he said that although the applications are very but the applicants cannot take the required licenses, adding that in recent years the association has received some 60 applications for the launch of airlines but none of them has been successful because investment in air industry is very heavy and entering this industry is very tough and jumping out of it is harder due to the existing obligations.
