Qeshm Air CEO Mahmoud Shekarabi was quoted as saying that his company planned to buy 10 Boeing 737 MAX and 10 Boeing 737 Next Generation planes from the American planemaker.

“Memoranda of understanding have been signed in this regard,” he said on the sidelines of the opening of national flag carrier Iran Air’s Catering in Tehran on Monday, Tasnim news agency reported.

Qeshm Air is also negotiating an order for 15 Airbus A320 and A319 jets from the European manufacturer and another 10 planes from Canada’s Bombardier, he said.

“These negotiations are underway, but there are a number of problems,” Shekarabi said without elaboration.

The company may also consider buying Sukhoi Superjet 100s from Russia but “we do not currently have any plans for it,” he added.

Last week, two other Iranian airlines said they had signed deals for the purchase of 40 short-haul passenger aircraft from the Russian company.

The purchases were made by Aseman Airlines and Iran Air Tours and the related documents were signed on the sidelines of Eurasia Airshow 2018 in Turkey’s Anatolia.

Aseman signed a final deal last June to buy 30 Boeing 737 MAX jets in Iran’s first new business with the US planemaker since Trump took office vowing to take a tougher stance toward the country.

Iranian domestic carrier Zagros Airlines also signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to buy 20 Airbus A320neo jets and eight A330neo aircraft, while privatized Iran Airtour signed an MoU for 45 A320neos.

The biggest orders, however, were made by Iran Air which has agreed to buy 80 aircraft from Boeing and 100 from Airbus in addition to 20 from Franco-Italian ATR company.

The deals were made possible after US-led sanctions against Iran were lifted in early 2016 under a nuclear agreement between the Islamic Republic and other countries.

Last year, Iran Air received three brand-new Airbus jets and eight new ATR turboprops. According to an official, Iran should receive 14 new passenger aircraft this year from Airbus, Boeing and ATR planemakers.

However, there are questions of what would happen to the deals if Trump went ahead with his threat to withdrew the US from the nuclear agreement on May 12 and whether the US Treasury would extend licenses for sales of the parts which are built in the United States.

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Kish Airline CEO Mohammad Taqi Jadidi was quoted by the domestic media that the plan envisaged buying 10 planes from Boeing and 6 more from Airbus.

Jadidi told Iran’s IRNA news agency that the new Airbus planes would be added to his company’s fleet before the end of the current Iranian calendar year (21 March 2018).

He added that Boeing planes would be purchased in the next Iranian year.

Nevertheless, the official did not specify which specific models the purchases would involve.

Kish Airline belongs to Kish Free Zone Organization and currently has 14 planes, including 2 Airbus-320, 2 Airbus-321, seven MD planes and 3 Fokker-100 planes, IRNA added in its report.

Airbus has already sealed deals to sell a total of 173 new aircraft to Iranian airlines with a collective value of tens of billions of dollars.

On the same front, Boeing had accrued orders and options for 140 planes, while the smaller European turboprop-maker ATR attracted orders and options for 40 aircraft.

Iran Air – the country’s national flag-carrier airline – appears to be the most active buyer of new planes. The company would buy a total of 220 new planes from Airbus, Boeing and ATR, covering both wide and narrow-bodied jets as well as turboprops. Airbus and ATR made their first deliveries of several planes over the past few months but Boeing deliveries would start in 2018.

Among the country’s smaller carriers, Iran Aseman Airlines would buy 30 new Boeing 737 Max 8 jets, with options for 30 more.

Iran Airtour would also purchase 45 Airbus A320neo aircraft.

And Zagros Airlines would acquire 28 Airbus aircraft, including 20 of its A320neo model and eight of its larger A330neo.

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Only a day after two Iranian airlines announced deals to purchase planes from Airbus, another Iranian carrier said it has sealed a third deal to buy advanced aircraft from US plane-maker Boeing, Press TV reported.

The head of Qeshm Air said on Friday that the company had placed an order for 10 Boeing 737 MAX planes.

Mahmoud Shekarabi was quoted by Fars News Agency as saying that the purchase of an additional five planes from Boeing 737-800 family was also on the agenda.

He added that relevant deal would be signed with the US aviation major within the next two months.

The purchase, he underlined, followed months of negotiations in Mexico and Iran.

The official further said Boeing would obtain the required licenses from the US Treasury Department for the sales of planes to Iran, adding that deliveries would be made after 2022.

On Thursday, European aviation giant Airbus says it has signed basic agreements with two Iranian airlines on the purchase of a total of 73 planes.

Also, Zagros Airlines CEO Abdolreza Mousavi told the domestic media that his company would lease the planes from Airbus.

In its statement Airbus added that the agreements with Zagros Airlines and Iran Airtour were contingent upon all necessary approvals, including those from the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

On the same front, Reuters quoted Airbus Sales Chief John Leahy as saying that he expected the US approvals within the next couple of months.

Zagros is already the largest operator of Airbus single-aisle aircraft in Iran with 11 A320ceo planes, AFP said in a report on the agreements.

Like Airtour, Zagros will use the new planes to upgrade its fleet and expand operations both at home and internationally, AFP quoted Zagros chief as saying in the Airbus statement.

Iran Airtour was established as a subsidiary of Iran’s national flag-carrier airline Iran Air in 1992 and privatized in 2011 but maintains a status as subsidiary of IranAir.

Zagros Airlines is a private carrier.

IranAir has already ordered 100 planes from Airbus, 80 from US rival Boeing and 20 ATR turboprops.

Boeing has also signed a deal for 30 737 MAX jets with Iran’s Aseman Airlines, which is managed as a private company and owned by Iran’s civil service pension foundation, Reuters added.

According to estimates from the Iranian civil aviation authority, the country’s airlines will need to purchase between 400 and 500 new planes over the next decade, AFP wrote in its report on the Airbus deals with Zagros Airlines and Iran Airtour.

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At the presence of Iranian Minister of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare Ali Rabiei, the contract was inked between Iran’s third largest airline, Aseman Airlines and the American plane maker Boeing in Tehran on Saturday for buying 30 Boeing 737 Max passenger jets while following delivery of the first batch, the company will order additional 30 jets.

The official noted that five percent of the deal will be paid by the Iranian airline while the remaining 95%, which is a considerable amount, will be financed by the American giant; “I am pleased that the measure can upgrade the country’s air fleet in order to capture regional markets.”

“Fortunately, Iran Aseman Airlines is becoming increasingly stabilized as evidenced by the rise in number of its operating planes from 8 to 21.”

Rabiei maintained that foreign airlines are annually selling tickets in Iran worth about four billion dollars and called for fundamental changes in the country’s airline in an effort to boost revenues.

Iran’s labor minister also slammed the twin terrorist attacks in Tehran emphasizing “in the absence of martyrs of Holy Shrines, terrorist governments would be ruling the region.”

Also at the ceremony, Aseman CEO Hossein Alaei said a US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) permit is expected to be granted in a month.

He further underscored that the deliveries will start in 2022 and within two years, the carrier will receive all 30 planes of the first batch.

The deal for 30 Boeing 737 Max jets would be worth $3 billion while room exist for ordering 30 more aircraft of the same type.

The deal is the first contract between an Iranian airliner and the American giant since President Donald Trump took office in January this year.

Boeing 737 MAX is an American narrow-body aircraft series being developed by Boeing Commercial Airplanes as the fourth generation of the Boeing 737, succeeding the Boeing 737 Next Generation.

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Under the agreement, the airlines will buy 30 Boeing 737 MAX airplanes worth $3 billion. The deal also gives Aseman the right to purchase another 30 of the Boeing’s twinjet narrow-body passenger planes.

IRNA said that representatives of Aseman and Boeing signed the agreement in Tehran covering as many as 60 jets, including options, after a year of negotiations.

Owned by Iran’s civil service pension foundation but managed as a private company, Aseman is Iran’s third largest airline by active fleet size, according to the CAPA consultancy.

Tehran-based Aseman Airlines has a fleet of 36 planes – half of them the 105-seat Dutch Fokker 100s. it operates them on flights to 40 domestic and 13 international destinations, according to its website. However, it was banned from flying into the European Union over safety concerns in December.

Its three Boeing 727-200s are almost as old as the 1979 Islamic Revolution, having made their first flight in 1980.

Boeing described the deal as a “memorandum of agreement,” a type of transaction that falls short of a binding contract and is subject to government approvals.

The Aseman deal still has to be approved by the US government. Boeing said it negotiated the agreement under government authorizations.

If completed, the main part of the deal for 30 jets would be worth $3.4 billion at list prices, though airlines typically win discounts of around 50 percent for large deals.

In the statement on the latest deal, Boeing cited US Department of Commerce data suggesting an “aerospace sale of this magnitude creates or sustains approximately 18,000 jobs in the United States”.

Deliveries to Aseman would start in 2022.

“Boeing continues to follow the lead of the US government with regards to working with Iran’s airlines and any and all contracts with Iran’s airlines are contingent upon US government approval,” Boeing said.

Boeing 737 MAX planes – that would enter service in the second half of 2017 – have a passenger capacity of 130 people and are specifically adequate for domestic and regional flights.

The planes that Aseman Airlines has purchased from Boeing would increase the company’s passenger transportation capacity to above 8,000 seats, Aseman emphasized.

Even before the latest Boeing deal, Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization said plane purchases would create 20,000 direct jobs, and thousands more indirectly.

“Currently, 500-700 co-pilots are unemployed in Iran,” CAO official Mohammad Reza Kazemipour said on Monday, adding that the new fleets would bring “tens of billions of dollars in revenues for Iran”.

The memorandum of understanding is the second big agreement Boeing has reached with Iranian airlines since sanctions were eased in January 2016 after an international agreement on Iran’s nuclear program.

Boeing is to provide 50 planes of the same type to Iran’s flag-carrier airline Iran Air through a similar agreement. The overall value of Iran Air’s order that also involves 30 long-range wide-body 777 aircraft is estimated to be $16.6 billion.

Iran Air said in December 2016 that Boeing would start to deliver the planes in 2018 and the deliveries would be completed within 10 years.

Iran has already received the first three of a total of 100 Airbus planes that it has purchased from the European company through an agreement worth around $18 billion. More deliveries are expected to take place in the coming months.

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