IranAir Archives - Iran News Daily

IranAir to Resume Flights to Cologne

reporter 1222 — Sun, 18 Oct 2020 05:17:26 +0000

TEHRAN (Iran News) – National flag carrier IranAir announced it will resume flights to Germany’s Cologne as of October 30.

The airline announced the issue on Thursday, Mehr News Agency reported.

The flight, No. 729, leaves Imam Khomeini International Airport (IKIA) at 17:40 on Fridays every week and arrives at Cologne Bonn Airport at 21:00 local time.

On the same day another flight, number 728, will take off from Cologne Bonn Airport at 22:30 local time and will land at IKIA at 6:15 a.m. on Saturday.

IranAir operates flights to three airports in Frankfurt, Cologne and Hamburg weekly, according to the airline.

On September 20, IranAir announced it was restoring flights to Istanbul after a seven-month halt that was caused by the spread of the coronavirus pandemic in Iran and other parts of the region.

IranAir said in a statement that flights to Istanbul would resume as of September 25 with Flight 719 from IKIA to Istanbul.

The airline said passengers should have had a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test 72 hours before arrival in Istanbul airport confirming they are free of coronavirus.

The airline said its certificate to fly to Istanbul had been issued “based on negotiations between the two countries of Iran and Turkey”.

Istanbul was one of IranAir’s main destinations before the pandemic hit global air travel in late February. The airline has managed to restore flights to key destinations in Europe now that restrictions meant to curb the virus have eased.

Flights to Istanbul had resumed in early July before Turkish authorities reimposed fresh bans on travel from several countries in the Middle East, including from Iran, over concerns about a second wave of the coronavirus outbreak.

The pandemic has had a deep impact on Iran’s aviation industry amid sanctions imposed by the US and allies that ban certain Iranian airlines from traveling to and above major countries.

Domestic air travel has also been impacted with authorities announcing earlier that some companies had lost about 90 percent of demand for flights to main destinations.

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‘U.S. sanctions not impeding Iranian aviation industry’s development’

reporter 1222 — Wed, 03 Jul 2019 04:52:09 +0000

Speaking in a memorial ceremony on Tuesday, Touraj Dehqani Zanganeh noted that since the U.S. re-imposed sanctions on the country all the technical checking and maintenance operations are being carried out by Iranian experts and the country is self-sufficient in this regard.
He further pointed to transporting 30 million passengers in year, as one of the achievements of Iran’s national airline, saying that currently the country’s fleet is comprised of 300 airplanes.
Training specialist forces inside the country and establishing numerous knowledge-based companies active in the aviation industry were among other achievements which the official mentioned in his speech.
“Despite the U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear deals and re-imposition of the sanctions which ended Iran Air’s cooperation with foreign partners, the Airline will go on providing its services and reaches new achievements,” Dehqani said.
On January 28, 2016, Iran Air signed a deal with the French giant plane maker Airbus for the purchase of 118 Airbus jets worth $27 billion and it also inked a deal with Boeing on December 11, 2016 to buy 80 aircrafts valued at $16.6 billion. It was Iran’s biggest deal with an American company since the 1979 revolution.
And in April 2017, Iran Air signed a contract to buy 20 planes from Franco-Italian turboprop maker ATR.
However, just a few number of the ordered planes (three Airbuses and 13 ATRs) were delivered before Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the nuclear deal and imposed new sanctions on Iran.
Now under the new U.S. sanctions, international plane manufacturers that use at least 10 percent U.S. made parts in their products have decided to avoid the Iranian market.

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‘Iran expects EU to extend Airbus OFAC license to deliver purchased aircrafts’

reporter 1222 — Tue, 18 Dec 2018 08:00:17 +0000

Farzaneh Sharafbafi, the managing director of Iran Air, Iran’s national flag carrier, said on Monday that Iran expects EU to get the U.S. approval for extending the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)’s license for importing the airplanes Iran bought from Airbus.

Speaking in a press conference, the official mentioned the deals Iran Air has with foreign aircraft makers and said Iran is strictly following these contracts.

On January 28, 2016, Iran Air signed a deal with the French giant plane maker Airbus for the purchase of 118 Airbus jets worth $27 billion, however only three are delivered to the country.

Iran Air also signed a contract in April 2017, to buy 20 planes from Franco-Italian turboprop maker ATR.

Sharafbafi further noted that ATR has delivered five new aircrafts to Iran by extending its OFAC license.

“As done for ATR, EU should also get the Airbus’s OFAC license extended”, she said.

Of its total purchases, so far Iran has only received 13 ATR airplanes and three Airbuses.

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Iran Air in negotiations with non-European airplane manufacturers

reporter 1222 — Mon, 05 Nov 2018 05:56:07 +0000

Iran Air, Iran’s national flag carrier, has started negotiations with the non-European manufacturers of airplanes in line with renovation of its fleet, Farzaneh Sharafbafi, the managing director of the airline, announced on Sunday.

“We will negotiate with any manufacturer which can supply airplanes for us without requiring permits from the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)”, she noted.
OFAC has cancelled licenses for Boeing and Airbus to sell airplanes to Iran after Trump pulled the United States out of the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement in May and reimposed sanctions on the country.

“We welcome any company which is able to provide the airplanes needed by Iran Air. We have even gone after planes such as Russia’s Sukhoi Superjet 100 or planes made by non-European manufacturers”, Sharafbafi stated referring to his company’s plan for renovating its fleet.

Facing lack of modern aircrafts due to decades-long sanctions imposed by the West, Iran took the post-sanction opportunity to make deals with some European manufacturers for the purchase of new airplanes to renew its aging fleet.

On January 28, 2016, Iran Air signed a deal with the French giant plane maker Airbus for the purchase of 118 Airbus jets worth $27 billion and it also inked a deal with Boeing on December 11, 2016 to buy 80 aircrafts valued at $16.6 billion. It was Iran’s biggest deal with an American company since the 1979 revolution and the U.S. embassy takeover.

And in April 2017, Iran Air signed a contract to buy 20 planes from Franco-Italian turboprop maker ATR.

Although, just a few number of the ordered planes (three Airbuses and 13 ATRs) were delivered before Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the nuclear deal and imposed new sanctions on Iran which makes new deliveries out of the question.

Now under the new U.S. sanctions, international plane manufacturers that use at least 10 percent U.S. made parts in their products have decided to avoid the Iranian market.

Most modern commercial planes have more than 10 percent in U.S. parts, the threshold for needing U.S. Treasury approval. But Russian officials have been reported as saying Sukhoi is working on reducing the number of U.S. parts in the hopes of winning an Iranian order for up to 100 aircraft, Reuters reported on Saturday.

on April 25, two Iranian airliners, Iran Airtour and Aseman Airlines, signed memorandums of understandings with Sukhoi on the purchase of 40 aircrafts from the Russian company.

Based on the MOUs signed on the sidelines of the Eurasia Airshow in Turkey, each airliner will receive 20 Sukhoi Superjet-100 (SSJ-100) passenger planes, Tass quoted Sukhoi Civil Aircraft President Aleksandr Rubtsov as saying.

Rubtsov said that the contracts will be signed by the end of 2018. The catalog price for a SSJ100R aircraft is about $52 million.

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