Page 45 - IRANRptOct20

Iran’s airport traffic drops 38% y/y in first five months Persian year
Ukraine agrees to further talks with Iran over UIA shooting in January
provinces.
The service would start out with several small planes that carry four to 19 people between low-traffic airports, the official said, adding one idea is to revive forgotten regional hubs with a lower cost base for flying.
"This plan was devised before the [1979] revolution, but its implementation was delayed for various reasons,” he said, adding: “But we at the headquarters have followed this plan seriously and with the knowledge of our founders, we were able to bring it to the implementation stage."
There are still hurdles to getting the project going, including sourcing the right aviation fuel for the small planes. The fuel type is currently imported.
Air taxi services will serve as part of the public transport aviation sector, a key component of the Iranian aviation industry, and more needed to be done to help foster their development, Manteqi previously said in September.
“Air taxi services have been established [to launch] in several provinces, namely in North Khorasan and Hormozgan, to render​ ​services from provincial capitals​ ​to nearby town and cities, and this domain is going to be further developed,” he added.
Iranian airports registered 88,269 takeoffs and landings during the first five months of the current Persian calendar year, (March 20 to August 21), marking a 38% y/y decline, the ​Financial Tribune​ has reported. Domestic and international flights remained substantially squeezed out of the picture given the severity of the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis, with international flights specifically seeing a 91% y/y collapse to just 862 flights in the examined period.
Despite this, IranAir, the national flag carrier continued to boost its international network, adding new flights to cities including Manchester in the UK.
Overall 8.12mn passengers were transported during the five months, representing a 52% decline, the report said.
Some 61,198 tonnes of cargo were transported by air, 57% less than in the same period of last year, Iran Airports Company (IAC) noted.
Ukraine has agreed to hold a second round of talks with Iran on the shooting down near Tehran of a Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) passenger plane. They will take place from October 18 to 21, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kyiv announced on September 9.
Iran recently called for ​the resumption of flights​, however, as the country has been dragging the investigation as to why the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) shot two rockets at the plane.
Deputy Foreign Minister Yevgeny Yenin made the announcement in a commentary to RBC-Ukraine, as part of efforts to bring Iran to account over the issue.
According to Yenin, the Ukrainian side has confirmed its readiness to hold negotiations on the dates previously proposed by Iran.
The first round of talks between Iran and Ukraine took place in late July in Kyiv, when the parties reached three agreements.
In that meeting, Iran agreed to fulfil all its obligations under the international convention on the safety of aviation. Also, the parties agreed on how to structure the negotiations.
It was also reported that Iran is ready to judicially settle all issues in the case of the UIA catastrophe if the parties move in the spirit of "goodwill".
The Iranian military shot down the UIA plane on January 8, 2020 as it departed from Tehran. Officially Tehran claims that this was due to the “human factor”, killing all 176 people on board.
Iran's air defences had been on high alert at the time. Hours earlier, the
45​ IRAN Country Report October 2020 www.intellinews.com