Iran to buy new airliners from Russia

Iran's Minister of Road and Urbanization Ali Nikzad announced on Monday that Iranian officials will soon start final negotiations with Moscow to purchase new passenger planes for the country. "Negotiations are underway for the purchase of planes from Russia," Nikzad said, adding that new Russian airplanes will join the country's air fleet if their compatibility with Iran's geographical and weather conditions are confirmed by Iran's Civil Aviation Organization (CAO). If the planes have all the mentioned features and specifications and are sold at a suitable price, and "if we reach a final agreement (with the Russians), we will buy a number of them". The minister did not provide any further detail and did not say if Tehran has entered talks with any specific Russian company, but he said a new type of small, narrow-body Tupolev and Sukhoi passenger planes are desirable for Iran's domestic flights. Iran has recently started a plan to renew its air fleet not only through purchase of foreign planes, but also through domestic production in a bid to improve conditions in its aviation industry. A senior Iranian civil aviation official had announced in February that 54 new planes had joined the country's passenger air fleet. The president of Iran's Civil Aviation Organization, Reza Nakhjavani, said at the time that 31 planes had been added to the country's aircraft fleet in the first ten months of the current Iranian calendar year (started on March 21, 2010). Iran withdrew its entire fleet of Tupolev aircraft earlier this year after a series of fatal accidents involving the planes. The ban affected 17 Tupolev TU 154 planes which were in service with four Iranian airlines, Nakhjavani said in February.