Iran to renew, expand passenger fleet this year

Iran plans to renovate its fleet of passenger planes and also upgrade its safety flight standards in the current Iranian year, Head of the Iranian Army's Cooperative Foundation Rear Admiral Abbas Mohtaj announced on Tuesday. "In order to expand the (country's) air fleet and improve the quality of the Caspian Airline, preliminary steps have been taken to purchase planes and we will supply the airline with 4 planes in coming days," Mohtaj said on Tuesday. He noted that the Army Cooperative Foundation plans purchase a total of Airbus A320 planes. Since 2010 Iran has 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. According to a report by the official website or the Iranian Ministry of Road and Urban Development, Iran Air added 6 new passenger planes to its fleet last year. Last month, a senior aviation official announced that Iran plans to renovate its fleet of passenger planes and also upgrade its safety flight standards this year. "If we add about 20 passenger planes to our fleet each year, we will achieve our specified goal of having a fleet with 550 aircraft by 2025,” Head of Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization Ali Reza Jahangirian told reporters in March. He explained that a sum of 14 new planes have joined the Iranian aviation fleet over past two months. "The Civil Aviation Organization will import new planes in a bid to revitalize its dilapidated airplanes," Jahangirian said. In May, former head of Iran's Civil Aviation Organization Hamid Reza Pahlavani announced that several new passenger planes would join the country's air fleet. "A number of planes will be added to the national fleet in