Iran receives four ATR passenger planes

ATR Company delivered four medium-range passenger aircraft to Iran.

On Tuesday, May 16, the ATR aircraft manufacturing company published images of the official delivery of these four aircraft to Iranian authorities in the French city of Toulouse, and wrote that Giovanni Trumpaloro, the company's director, and Farhad Parvaresh, the CEO of Iran Air, expressed their satisfaction with the arrival of the aircraft delivery.

The aircraft delivered to Iran by the Italian-French company are ATR 72-600s. The IRNA news agency reported that the four aircraft will arrive in Iran on Wednesday.

Following the nuclear agreement and the implementation of the JCPOA, Iran received permission from the United States government to purchase passenger aircraft and succeeded in signing a contract to purchase 100 Airbus aircraft, 80 Boeing aircraft, and 20 ATR aircraft.

So far, Airbus has delivered three of the aircraft to Iran.

ATR aircraft are medium-range aircraft with a capacity of 72 passengers. These propeller-driven aircraft are suitable for short routes and low-traffic airports in Iran.

Iran's aviation industry has been facing a severe fleet obsolescence and aircraft shortage after more than three decades of sanctions, and needs to import more than 200 passenger aircraft for modernization, so obtaining permission to purchase new aircraft was among Iran's demands in the nuclear negotiations. After the implementation of the JCPOA and the lifting of sanctions, permission to sell aircraft to Iran was issued on a case-by-case basis by Barack Obama and the US Treasury Department.

In recent months, some members of the US Congress have called for the Trump administration to intervene and block the sale of Boeing aircraft to Iran. They say that the Islamic Republic of Iran is using the use of passenger planes to send weapons and equipment to its allies in the region, including Assad and terrorist groups such as Hamas.

Source: Voice of America