Iran Likely to Receive 11 ATR, Airbus Planes by Year End: Official
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Head of Iran’s flag carrier Iran Air said the country expects to receive 11 passenger planes from Franco-Italian turboprop maker ATR and the European aviation giant Airbus by the end of the current year.
Speaking to reporters on Monday on the sidelines of the 74th IATA Annual General Meeting and World Air Transport Summit in Sydney, Australia, Iran Air CEO Farzaneh Sharafbafi said Iran expects to take delivery of eight planes from ATR and three others from Airbus.
Earlier, Asghar Fakhriyeh-Kashan, an adviser to Iran’s minister of roads and urban development, had said that ATR and Iran Air have agreed on the delivery of the ordered planes before new US sanctions against Iran take effect.
According to Fakhriyeh-Kashan, there has also been some correspondence between Iran and the two plane manufacturers Airbus and Boeing about the delivery of planes ordered by the country.
Washington’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and reinstate sanctions signals the collapse of about $38 billion in plane deals between Tehran and Western firms, with Airbus facing greater risks than its US rival Boeing, people involved in the deals say.
Iran Air had ordered 200 passenger aircraft, 100 from Airbus, 80 from Boeing (BA.N) and 20 from ATR. All the deals are dependent on US license because of the heavy use of American parts in the planes.
Iran has so far imported only 11 aircraft, three from Airbus and eight from Franco-Italian turboprop maker ATR (LDOF.MI).
In a speech from the White House on May 8, US President Donald Trump pulled his country out of the JCPOA, which was achieved in Vienna in 2015 after years of negotiations among Iran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany).
Following the US exit, Iran and the remaining parties have launched talks to save the accord.
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei has underlined that any decision to keep the JCPOA running without the US should be conditional on “practical guarantees” from the three European parties to the deal.