The second new Airbus, purchased after the lifting of sanctions, which is an Airbus A330-243, landed in Mehrabad International Airport on Saturday morning, March 11.
During sanctions, the Iranian avionics industry suffered greatly. Abbas Akhundi, Minister of Roads and Urbanization summed up the problems: “The Iranian avionics industry has 245 airplanes, of which 100 aircraft are not flight worthy. The country’s airports have turned into airplane graveyards and the remaining 145 aircraft are more than 24 years old. To renew the fleet, we need 20 billion Dollars in investments while the treasury and general budget cannot even allow for 1% of that investment.”
Iran Air which had become one of most in debt companies in Iran, has gained new life with these new airplanes.
Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) has reported that Iran Air is 3300 billion IRR ($102m) in debt. Due to 70% of Iran Air’s fleet to be defunct, Iran Air income has reduced significantly; occasionally the company has even struggled to pay employee salaries. Iran Air has over 10 thousand staff of which 2600 are official employees and the remaining are contract employees.
Furthermore, from 2010 and due to sanctions, Iran Air planes were unable to refuel in some European airports such as Frankfurt and Köln-Bonn and were therefore forced to refuel at other airports. This additional takeoff and landing added an additional cost of 20000 Euros for Iran Air. Since lifting of sanctions, Iran Air flights are again able to refuel at all airports.
