Iran says two of its leading airlines have purchased a collective of 40 Sukhoi SuperJet 100 planes from Russia thus ending speculations over a purchase scheme that had been in the offing for the past few years.
The purchases were made by Aseman Airlines and Iran Air Tours and the related documents were signed on the sidelines of Eurasia Airshow 2018 in Turkey’s Anatolia.
According to a report by IRNA news agency, the planes that Aseman Airlines purchased belonged to RRJ-95R class of Sukhoi’s latest model of SuperJets.
IRNA also quoted an Iran Air Tours official as saying that the total value of the company’s purchases of Sukhoi planes stood at $1 billion.
Marziyeh Jafarzadeh, the director of the Iran Air Tours’ Public Relations Department, said the deliveries of the planes would start within a year, adding that each plane would add 100 seats to the company’s passenger capacity.
Sukhoi was reported last February to be close to a deal to sell its SuperJets to Iran and had thus started technical talks to obtain the required authorizations from the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
Prior to this, Hossein Alaei, the head of Iran’s Aseman Airlines, had said that his company was negotiating with Sukhoi as well as several other leading global plane makers to renovate its fleet.
Alaei added that Sukhoi had carried out trial flights of its Superjet 100 in Tehran in December 2016 – what he said had been carried out at the invitation of Aseman Airlines.
Iran’s biggest plane shopper is Iran Air which has already sealed deals with global aviations giants such as Boeing and Airbus to purchase above 100 new planes. It has already received several planes from Airbus, but deliveries by Boeing are yet to start.