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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Iran Air will take delivery of two ATR 72-600s at Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport on Friday.

Two ATR72-600 aircrafts will be shipped into Homa Airlines by Iranian pilots after the grand tests in French city of Toulouse.

Iran Air CEO is scheduled to travel to France on Tuesday, to finalize necessary documents regarding the two airplanes.

Iran is gradually receiving the passenger planes purchased from Airbus, ATR , and Boeing, following the implementation of the JCPOA.

Back in April 2017, Iran Air signed a contract with ATR to buy 20 planes from turboprop maker ATR.

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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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Deputy Minister of Roads and Urban Development for International Affairs Asghar Fakhrieh Kashan was quoted by Press TV as saying that nine financial institutions from Norway, Denmark, Ireland, Britain, China and Japan had already approached Iran to fund the purchases.

He did not disclose the names of the interested financers.

Nevertheless, he underlined that arrangements to hold a tender to choose the financier for the purchases were underway, adding that tender documents would be sent out to potential bidders within a month.

Last week, he was quoted by THE media as saying that Britain’s key export credit agency — UK Export Finance (UKEF) — had informed Iran’s Ministry of Roads and Urban Development that it was ready to provide funding for all of Iran’s purchases from Boeing and Airbus.

He stressed that Iran wanted to have an open hand in choosing the best financiers and that a tender to this effect would be held soon.

“Iran Air is preparing the tender documents so that they would be sent to all credible financiers worldwide,” Fakhrieh Kashan told IRNA.

“We are in conditions that permit us to choose our desired financiers in a competitive atmosphere that a tender creates.”

Also, Iran’s media last October quoted an unidentified government official as saying that Boeing had sealed a deal with an American bank to provide financing for Iran’s purchase of airliners in cooperation with a Japanese bank.

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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.

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The deal took weeks of shuttling between Airbus headquarters in Toulouse, France, and Tehran, complicated by a shortage of expert legal advice as Iran completes its biggest commercial deals with the West since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Airbus in a statement said almost half the jets would be for short to medium routes and that deliveries would start early next year.

The contract includes 46 of the narrow-body A320 family which includes the A321 model, 38 long-haul A330s and 16 of Europe’s newest long-range model, the A350.

The order follows a commitment inked in January when President Hassan Rouhani visited Paris in the wake of a deal between Iran and six world powers over its nuclear program.

Planemaking chief Fabrice Bregier called the deal “a significant first step” in modernizing Iranian aviation, adding it included training, airport operations and air traffic management.

However, both sides confirmed the Airbus A380, the largest passenger plane in the world, had been jettisoned from a provisional list first agreed in January.

Although up to 12 were earmarked in the initial agreement, Tehran’s international airport is not currently equipped for such planes.

US regulatory delays further reduced the order by six planes, lowering the total order to 100 from 118 jets.

Iran Air,1956

Iran’s civil aviation

Iran Air’s CEO Farhad Parvaresh said the deal was “an important step toward a stronger international presence in civil aviation”.

He added: “We hope this success signals to the world that the commercial goals of Iran and its counterparts are better achieved with international cooperation and collaboration.”

Parvaresh stressed that the deal has paved the way “for more practical steps to follow for Iran Air’s fleet renewal”.

Such a deal would be worth $18-20 billion at list prices, depending on variants flown, but Iran is expected to receive steep discounts from foreign manufacturers as its aviation renewal coincides with a drop in demand elsewhere.

It is expected to be followed by a formal deal to buy turboprop aircraft from ATR, half-owned by Airbus.

The first jet, an Airbus A321 already painted in Iran’s national carrier livery, may arrive in January.

“When Airbus and ATR aircraft start going into Iran, Boeing will point to that to argue that it should implement its own deal,” said an aviation source, who closely followed the talks.

In another deal earlier this month, Iran Air finalized a contract to buy 80 planes from Airbus’ US competitor Boeing.

Boeing said that contract – Iran’s first deal with a US aviation firm since 1979 – was worth $16.6 billion.

Despite rivalries, the Airbus and Boeing deals with Iran are unusually intertwined because each depends on continued US clearances for the sale of planes built with US parts.

“Everyone has an interest in moving quickly. The Iranian government wants to show results from the nuclear deal; Airbus wants to get deliveries moving and Boeing wants the leverage it can get from European deliveries to Iran,” another source said.

Airbus said the deal was subject to US Treasury export licenses granted in September and November 2016.

Republican critics of the nuclear pact want Trump to block the aircraft deals and have sought to hamper them by voting to tighten restrictions on use of the US financial system.

Airbus is expected to be paid in euros instead of the usual dollars and is likely to provide its own financing for the first few jets./Iran-daily

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He added that the details of the contract with Airbus to purchase brand new aircraft will be made public afterwards, Tasnim News Agency reported.

During Iranian President Hassan Rouhani‘s visit to Paris in January, Tehran signed the major contract with Airbus worth about $27 billion to buy 118 planes.

Iran and Airbus intensified business negotiations in October following the US decision to remove a final hurdle for Western aircraft manufacturers to sell planes to Iran under contracts signed after the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a nuclear agreement between Tehran and the P5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany) was implemented in January.

While Western plane makers are impatient to begin trade with Iran, Washington still demands that even non-American manufacturers wishing to sell to Iran obtain an export license if their products include materials made in the United States. Airbus, based in Europe, buys more than 40 percent of all its aircraft parts from the US.

Iran sealed another deal in June worth around $25 billion with the US aerospace heavyweight, Boeing, to purchase 100 passenger planes.

The deal with Boeing was finalized earlier this month allowing Iran to buy 80 planes within 10 years. The first deliveries are expected in 2018.

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Parvaresh added that IranAir will pay 15 percent of prices of the passenger jet from Iran’s development fund./ (Source: Reuters)

Iran buy 80 airplanes from Boeing

Iran Air CEO Farhad Parvaresh said the Iranian national carrier has signed into an agreement with Boeing aircraft manufacturing company to purchase 80 airplanes.

Managing Director of Iran’s national carrier, Iran Air (Homa), Farhad Parvaresh made the remarks on the sidelines of agreement signing ceremony today in Tehran between Airline of the Islamic Republic of Iran (Iran Air) and directors of Boeing Company at the presence of Iran’s Minister of Roads and Urban Development Abbas Ahmad Akhundi.

Parvaresh underlined that 50 of the aircraft will be of Boeing 737 model which is a short- to medium-range twinjet narrow-body airliner.

“The other 30 airplanes will be Boeing 777 long-range wide-body twin-engine jet airliners,” highlighted the official noting that deliveries will be made to Iran Air over a ten-year time span.

Representative of Boeing, the world’s largest aerospace company and leading manufacturer of commercial jetliners and defense, space and security systems, said the deal with Iran was finalized with approval of the US government.

The official, while stressing that the contract was worth 16.6 billion dollars, said Boeing had sealed the final agreement to sell 80 commercial aircraft to Iran upon receiving necessary permits from the goverment of the US.

The Boeing official recalled that the final document signed today followed the Memorandum of Understanding inked earlier in June; “we are pleased that Boeing has one more resumed cooperation with Iran,” he observed.

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