Deputy road minister said eight new Airbus and ATR passenger planes will be delivered to Iran Air within three months.
Deputy Minister for International Affairs at the Ministry of Road and Urban Development Asghar Fakhrieh Kashan made the announcement elaborating that “Iran‘s national carrier, Iran Air (Homa) will receive one A330 and two A320 long-range Airbus aircrafts by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (on March 20, 2017).”
Representatives of ATR are slated to visit Tehran on Wednesday, said the official adding “the final round of talks between Airline of the Islamic Republic of Iran (Iran Air) and a French-Italian aircraft manufacturer will kick off in the coming days and a contract is expected to be inked in the course of talks.”
He recalled that the two sides had previously agreed in purchase of 20 aircraft though Iran is capable of buying 20 more planes from the European manufacturer which is a subsidiary of Airbus.
On financial resources of the aircraft purchase contracts, Fakhrieh Kashan underlined that Iran Air will undertake 15 per cent of the financing while the remaining 85 per cent will be supplied through foreign financing.
Referring to the foreign companies’ interest in striking deals with Iran, he noted that the country has no problems for funding such agreements.
The contract value for buying 20 ATR planes is less than 500 million dollars and the figure for Airbus stands below 10 billion dollars, he stressed.
Also, Iran Air and the American Corporation of Boeing signed an agreement on selling 80 aircraft to Iran on December 11 though the first batch of those passenger aircrafts are expected to be delivered to Iran in early 2018.
Deputy Iranian roads minister, while stressing that the initial contract with Boeing was worth 16.6 billion dollars, given Iran’s proposal and the freedom to choose plane types, the actual value of the deal to buy 80 Boeing aircraft will be worth about 50 percent of the mentioned amount.
