Baku, Azerbaijan, March 10
By Emil Ilgar - Trend:
Germany's Lufthansa aviation to sign a memorandum of understanding with Iran, IRNA reported on March 10.
Iran and Lufthansa discussed the cooperation and the country's priority is the German company's logistic, maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) services as well as reforming of the Airline of the Islamic Republic of Iran (Homa), Minister of Transport Abbas Akhoundi said.
Akhoundi's statement came as a delegation of Lufthansa visited Tehran on March 9.
Before, the local media reported that Homa and Lufthansa work closely over five fields such as technical issues, commercial activities, aviation IT systems, navigation mechanisms and restricting.
Lufthansa announced on last October that it will resume direct flight from Munich to Tehran in April 2016.
Akhundi has earlier emphasized that the country's civil aviation fleet consists of 248 aircraft with an average age of 20 years, of which 100 are in storage.
Other officials has said that as many as 70 planes can return to service if they get their supply of vintage parts, providing also a boon to plane manufacturers, salvage firms and parts suppliers.
Iran has a potential order list for 500 commercial planes to renovate its aging fleet. In January, Iran signed a major deal worth over $27 billion for the purchase of 118 planes from Airbus. The deal - which is yet to be finalized - was signed during a landmark trip to Paris by Iran's President Hassan Rouhani, Press TV reported.
Talks to purchase more planes are currently underway with several other leading aviation enterprises including Boeing, Embraer, Bombardier and ATR.