At one point, not too long ago, IranAir had
118 Airbus aircraft on order, worth around
$25 billion at list prices. This order included
aircraft from nearly every Airbus line, including
the A380. So what happened?
In 2015, the American Obama administration
worked out a nuclear deal with Iran which
saw the lifting of sanctions against the country.
With this breakthrough in negotiations, IranAir
went on a shopping spree.
Previous decades of sanctions had not been
kind to the airline. An inability to purchase
new jets meant the average age of its fleet
was over 20 years old. Many aircraft were
grounded due to a lack of spare parts while
lucrative markets like the US were not available
for the airline as destinations.
The 2015 Iran nuclear deal allowed IranAir
to overhaul its fleet as well as to have an
option to refuel at many European destinations.
The carrier made two significant orders, one
with Airbus and another with Boeing.
The Airbus order included the following:
21 A320ceos (including some A321s)
24 A320neos (including some A321neos)
27 A330s - split between the A330-200 and
A330-300
18 A330-900neo aircraft
16 A350-1000s and
12 A380s.
What is fascinating is that the order has
both aircraft like the older A330 and the
newer A350-1000. It’s possible that this
had something to do with what happened next...
Right from the get-go, one significant part
of the order vanished as IranAir decided not
to proceed with the A380 for a variety of
reasons.
While the order was signed, fulfillment was
slow, as banking firms were reluctant to back
the deal feeling that sanctions could reappear
on the country at any time. Without pre-delivery
payments from IranAir, Airbus was cautious
to start building the aircraft.
“You have got to make pre-delivery payments
where aircraft get into production, so we
are doing it on perhaps a lower basis than
we thought, but we still believe that it will
work out,” Airbus sales chief John Leahy
told Reuters in an interview.
With three deliveries of Airbus jets and a
few ATR turboprops, it looked like the order
would be complete just past 2020.
However, 2016 brought with it a change in
the US Government’s administration. President
Donald Trump made the decision of withdrawing
from the Iran Nuclear Deal. Sanctions were
swiftly reimposed in 2018.
The new rules gave both Airbus and Boeing
90 days to deliver any aircraft to IranAir
– a deadline that was impossible to meet
considering the size. Perhaps this was the
reason why IranAir ordered several older aircraft
in the hope that they could buy them before
any additional restrictions came back.
In the end, the move by the US government
meant that Airbus and Boeing lost out on billions
in sales.
An interesting footnote to this story is that
the Airbus order is not technically canceled,
unlike the Boeing order.
Perhaps the European planemaker is waiting
to see if things change in the 2020 election?
We will just have to wait and see...
Would IranAir have become a prominent global
airline had its orders become deliveries?
Let us know your thoughts in
the comments.
