Iran Air says EU refueling bans lifted

Iran said on Saturday that sanctions which banned refueling services to Iranian planes in Europe have been lifted.

The country’s flag-carrier airline Iran Air said in a statement that European airports have started refueling Iranian planes after the implementation of a historic nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 last week.

Iran Air said one of its planes will accordingly leave the Germany city of Frankfurt on Saturday afternoon and will later arrive in Tehran in the evening without having to refuel in a third country. The first such flight was made from Paris to Tehran this past Tuesday.

From 2010, Iran’s planes had to land in a third country to refuel on their way home from a visit to Europe.  This effectively increased flight costs and also led to significant delays.

Iran Air added that airports in Paris, Amsterdam, Cologne and London are now providing refueling services to Iranian planes. This, it said, is the result of the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that led to the lifting of a wide range of economic sanctions against Iran.

Iran and the P5+1 group of countries – the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany – agreed on the JCPOA last July.  Based on it, Iran has agreed to limit certain aspects of its nuclear energy activities in return for the removal of the economic sanctions that the P5+1 have imposed on it.

On a related front, Mohammad Khodakarami, the deputy for international affairs of Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization (CAO), told reporters on Saturday that several European airlines are doing the preliminaries for resuming flights to Iran.  The airlines include the British Airways, Air France KLM and Alitalia, he said.