Iran DESTINATIONS
Iran Air is the oldest airline in the Middle East
Iran’s 5 Busiest Airports in 2015
1. Mehrabad International Airport City: Tehran
Number of passengers: 13,515,693
2. Mashhad International Airport City: Mashhad
Number of passengers: 8,545,598
3. Imam Khomeini International Airport City: Tehran
Number of passengers: 7,243,120
4. Kish International Airport City: Kish
Number of passengers: 2,740,076
5. Shiraz International Airport City: Shiraz
Number of passengers: 2,730,488
Even for airlines that are able to sign deals with western suppliers, such as Iran Air, the road ahead will not be easy. Decades of sanctions have blocked the flag carrier from sourcing planes through the usual channels, leaving it with an average aircraft age of 27 years. A tentative order for 118 Airbus jets – announced in January – has opened the door to mainline fleet renewal, but training Iranian pilots and engineers for new-generation aircraft will be a time-consuming process. Financing it will also be tricky, with western banks treading cautiously in the unfamiliar Iranian market. Undeterred by the scale of the challenge, government officials are pledging to transform Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport (IKA) into a sixth-freedom mega-hub that can rival any of its neighbours. Two French companies – Aéroports
de Paris and Bouygues – have signed a Memorandum of Understanding aimed at lifting IKA’s annual capacity to 34 million passengers by 2020. The gateway handled just 7.2 million passengers last year, while another 13.5 million people passed through Mehrabad International Airport, Tehran’s domestically-focused gateway.
“We don’t have problems with manpower. Our engineers are skilled, our pilots are well trained. Most of them can communicate in English.”
By way of comparison, Dubai
International Airport processed more than 78 million passengers last year. Iraj Ronaghi, commercial VP of Meraj Airlines, says that the government had always intended IKA to function as an intercontinental sixth-freedom connector. He attributes the tearaway success of rival hubs in the Persian Gulf – Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha – partly to the debilitating impact of sanctions on Iran’s aviation sector. “IKA was planned for these activities,”
Ronaghi said of the airport, which opened its doors in 2004. “But because of what happened and all the sanctions, it [the flow of traffic] moved gradually to the south and also to Istanbul.” Several attributes would give Tehran a
competitive edge over its regional rivals, he continues. The capital’s high altitude and temperate climate provide clear technical benefits, while its geographical location offers more direct routings on flights between Europe and south-east Asia. A large, highly-skilled indigenous workforce also guarantees low labour costs. “We don’t have problems with manpower. Our engineers are skilled, our pilots are well trained. Most of them can communicate in English,” Ronaghi says. “The country was not that closed. We had our training abroad.” Despite talking up Iran’s long-term
prospects, however, Ronaghi was sceptical of the rose-tinted forecasts coming from some quarters. w
routesonline.com ROUTES NEWS 2016 ISSUE 3 35
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