Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 17
By Umid Niayesh - Trend:
Iran has added five airplanes to its air fleet, head of Iran Civil Aviation Organization Alireza Jahangirian said on Feb. 17, the country's IRIB News Agency reported on Feb. 17.
Jahangirian went on to say that that the airplanes are Airbus and Boeing.
The total capacity of the country's civil aviation has increased by 5 percent by joining the five aircrafts to the fleet, he added.
Earlier on Feb, 8, Iranian media outlets quoted Jahangirian as saying Iran has added six Antonov aircrafts to its air fleet in the past two months.
Jahangirian said on Dec. 7 that most of Iran's current aircrafts would be out of service by Iranian calendar year of 1404 (2025) so the country needs to annually add 30 aircrafts to its air fleet.
"That would annually cost at least one billion dollars for Iran's aviation industry," the ISNA News Agency quoted Jahangirian as saying.
"Although the number of Iran's aircrafts increased to 240 from the previous figure of 140 in the past eight years, most of them are old, so the country's air fleet was practically developed by only 20 percent in the mentioned period," he said.
The former head of Iran Civil Aviation Organization Hamidreza Pahlevani said on Nov. 10 that Iran has imported seven aircrafts.
"The country has added 24 Airbus to its air fleet from the beginning of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21), three of them Airbus 320," he said, adding that 21 aircraft were imported to Iran last year.
Pahlevani previously said Iran plans to increase the number of its aircrafts up to 550 by Iranian calendar year 1404 (2025), adding that by continuing this trend the country will certainly achieve the goal.
The managing director of Iran Airtour Airline Sirous Baheri said on Sept. 1 that over 60 percent of Iran's total 220 airplanes are grounded due to technical and logistic issues.
On Feb. 4, managing Director of Islamic Republic of Iran Airline (Iran Air), Farhad Parvaresh said that Iranian air lines have submitted their requests to European and American manufacturers on purchase of plane parts.
Once the plane parts are provided, some ten passenger planes will be repaired and added to the Iran Air's fleet, he underlined.
In total, about one fourth of 100 Iranian grounded planes will restart their flight, after supplying the needed plane parts, Parvaresh said.
Tehran is allowed limited purchases of aircraft parts and repairs based on the Geneva deal.
On Jan. 12, Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - Russia, China, France, Britain, and the U.S. - plus Germany agreed on Jan. 20 as the date to start implementing the interim nuclear deal that the two sides struck in Geneva on November 24, 2013.
On Jan. 20, the United States and the European Union suspended part of the sanctions against Iran after the IAEA confirmed earlier in the day that Iran had halted 20-percent uranium enrichment under the Geneva agreement.
