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Iran's Imam Khomeini Airport lacks international standards

Business Materials 20 February 2019 09:59 (UTC +04:00)

Tehran,Iran, Feb.20

Trend:

Airport cities play important role in economic development of countries, however the potential of Iran's Imam Khomeini International Airport has remained untouched and the standards of airports in Iran are far from international standards.

The best example of implementation of global standards is the Dubai International Airport that is close to Iran and is considered as the busiest airport in the world due to amount of passenger transportation.

In 2016 the airport handled more than 83 million passengers.

The question is how a small city like Dubai has reached such a high rank in comparison to Tehran, where the Imam Khomeini International Airport has failed to rise in the ranks.

There was a time where Iran was supposed to turn into a magnet for flights in the region by launching the Imam Khomeini International Airport, but the construction of airport that was also coincided with the Dubai Airport's creation, lasted for so long that it had lost its chance.

One the other hand major passengers in Iranian airports were Iranian citizens, therefore they did not bring back revenues to the country, while most of passengers in the Dubai Airport were foreign nationalities that turned the airport to a permanent oil well for the UAE and especially Dubai.

"It is true that currently some companies use the Imam Khomeini Airport for transit and passenger transfer to Europe but the number of these airline companies are limited that needs to be expanded," said the Secretary of Iran's Aviation Companies Association Maghsoud Asadi-Samani in an interview with Trend.

"However, the infrastructure should also be considered, since due to cultural issues, many foreign passengers no longer have the tendency to use the Imam Khomeini Airport as transit," he added.

Asadi-Samani said that turning into a regional hub requires planning and depends on transit of airline companies that basically need airport facilities including hotels, domestic services such as issuing visas.

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