Iran Air

Benedict Gombocz

Background

Flag carrier of Iran; operates services to eighty destinations.

Its cargo fleet, operated by its subsidiary Iran Air Cargo, operates services to twenty scheduled and five charter destinations.

Its main hubs are Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport and Tehran Mehrabad Airport for international and domestic flights, respectively.

Has its headquarters on the property of Mehrabad Airport.

Is also known by its Persian abbreviation, Homa (Persian: هما), which originates from two sources: the initial letters of Iran’s name before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Havapeyma'i-ye Melli-ye Iran (Persian: ایران ملی .and from Homa, a griffin of Persian mythology ,(هواپیمایی

Facts

Founded 1938 as Iranian State Airlines

Commenced operations 1944 (as Iran Air)

Hubs Tehran-Mehrabad International Airport, Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport

Focus cities Mashhad International Airport, Shiraz International Airport, Isfahan International Airport, Tabriz International Airport, Dubai International Airport

Frequent-flyer program SkyGift

Subsidiaries Homa Hotel Group, Iran Airtour, Iran Air Cargo

Fleet size 33

Destinations 80

Company slogan Our Mission Is Your Safety, We Take You There And We Take You Back

Parent company Iran National Airlines Corporation

Headquarters Mehrabad Airport, Tehran, Iran

Key people Farbad Parvaresh (Chairman & CEO)

Website www.iranair.com

Subsidiaries: Iran Air Cargo

The airline’s freight wing is Iran Air Cargo.

In May 2008, it purchased two Airbus A300B4F aircraft to continue freighter operations, which were postponed after the training of its one Boeing 747-200F cargo aircraft.

Freight is additionally flown with Iran Air’s passenger fleet belly-hold capability.

Subsidiaries: Iran Airtour

Iran Airtour is a low-cost airline, based at the Mashbad International Airport (MHD); it is a subsidiary of Iran Air.

Soviet-made Tu-154M jets were the airline’s strength, even though Iran Air Tours has obtained numerous Airbus A300B4 and MD-83 aircraft on contract and in hybrid livery from Turkey; this increases its flights to domestic cities, such as Mashbad, Zahedan, and Ahvaz.

In 1990, Iran Air Tours began scheduled operations, and took over the majority of the domestic services, previously operated by Iran Air.

Iran Air Tours has been responsible for establishing an extensive route network that focuses on the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad, the home of the Imam Reza shrine, one of the most sacred monuments of the Shi’a Muslims.

Reservations for Iran Air Tours flights can be made from the Iran Air system.

The charter additionally operates charter flights.

Subsidiaries: Homa Hotel Group

Homa Hotel Group is a subsidiary company of Iran Air, which has a chain of hotels in Iran’s major cities.

Homa Hotels can be found in Tehran, Shiraz, Bandar Abbas, and Mashhad, where there are two hotels.

All of these hotels were built before the 1970s, excluding the second Mashhad Hotel, constructed in the late 1990s.

The government founded the hotel group, which has over 800 furnished rooms, after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Before 1979, the majority of the hotels were privatized, but were made public soon after; the Homa Hotel Tehran, formerly the Tehran Sheraton, was the most famous of these before it was made public in 1979.

Corporate offices: Corporate headquarters

The carrier’s main office is located on the grounds of Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport.

Israeli engineers built this main office before the Islamic Revolution.

The facility had a Star of David on its roof for years before its discovery on Google Maps around 2010, more than thirty years after the office was constructed.

Iranian officials had plans to remove the Star of David from the office.

Foreign offices

The airline’s London offices currently are in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham.

The airline moved there by Wednesday, 4 January 2012, prior to which it had its Piccadilly main sales office in the City of Westminster.

Demonstrators threw firebombs at the Piccadilly office in 1992.

As of 2011, the airline still had a model of an Iran Air Concorde in the London office’s windows.

Even though Iran Air signed up to be a manufacturer of the Concorde, the airline only seldom operated Concorde, and only leased it temporarily.

Iran Air’s offices in the Netherlands are on Level 3 of Tower A of Schiphol Airport’s World Trade Center.

Iran Air Airbus A300-600, London Heathrow Airport

Services

Hajj charter operations make up a significant part of Iran Air’s yearly activities.

Tens of thousands of tourists fly from Iran’s major cities to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia’s air entry to Mecca, to participate in pilgrimage observances.

Iran Air carried approximately 60,000 tourists to Jeddah in 2001, within a forty-day period; 352 Hajj charter flights were operated from seventeen Iranian cities.

The carrier additionally operates charter flights from Iranian cities to Jeddah, during the Umrah session; to handle the operational obligations and to fulfill traffic demand, the airline leases aircraft, such as Boeing 747-200s and Airbus A300B2s.

Codeshare agreements

As of November 2012, Iran Air has codeshare agreements with these airlines:

Aeroflot

Austrian Airlines

Turkish Airlines

Fleet modernization

Iran Air is set to start a partial upgrading program of its own fleet as well as that of its subsidiary Iran Air Tours with new-generation Russian aircraft.

The airline announced an order for five aircraft in August 2007; five Tupolev Tu-204-100s will be obtained for Iran Air Tours.

The Tu-204 deal was unveiled by Moscow-based lessor Ilyushin Finance (IFC), which said that the firm agreement would be signed by 15 December 2006; the deal additionally had five choices.

Iran Air anticipated that the five firmly ordered twin-jets will be sent to Iran Air Tours in the second part of 2010, at a rate of one aircraft every month.

At the Dubai Air Show 2007, Russia’s Ilyushin Finance concluded an early agreement with Iran Air Tours to provide Iran with five Tupolev Tu-204 (Tu-204-100) aircraft.

The airline acquired four Fokker 100s from TAM Airlines of Brazil in August 2007.

Iran Air has also shown a strong interest in the Sukhoi Superjet 100.

The End

YouTube links:

Iran Air Safety Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3i50sW73hk

Iran Air Boeing 747SP Commercial – 1977: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbTcKlwR030