ATR - Avions de Transport Régional is in talks with other customers over their interest in picking up the ATR72-600 airframes originally destined for IranAir (IR, Tehran Mehrabad) but orders for which were dropped following Washington's decision to reimpose sanctions on Iran.
“We are pretty confident that we will finalize the re-allocation to other countries” by the end of this year, Chief Executive Officer Alessandro Profumo told Bloomberg TV during the Ambrosetti Forum in Cernobbio, Italy.
Iran Air ordered twenty of the type from the Italo-French manufacturer in 2015, shortly after the original JCPOA 5+1 nuclear accords were signed. As of the August 7 deadline for the termination of all contracts, Iran Air had taken delivery of thirteen ATR72-600s.
It is recalled that on the arrival of the last trio of turboprops in early August, Iran Air Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Farzaneh Sharafbafi was quoted by IRNA as saying the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) had given its consent for the delivery of three more ATR72s beyond the August 7 cut-off. If so, this would bring Iran Air's ATR fleet up to sixteen.
Iran's Minister for Roads and Urban Development, Abbas Akhoundi, later confirmed that EUR5 million euro (USD5.78 million) worth of US and French-manufactured spare parts had also been stockpiled for Iran Air's use.
Meanwhile, the head of the Iranian Parliament's Civil Commission, Mohammad Reza Rezayee Kouchi, has since confirmed that Iran would file an international lawsuit against ATR for what he termed, its failure to fulfil its contractual obligations to Iran Air.
"Any company, under any circumstance, is duty-bound to comply with the terms of its agreement and cannot dodge its commitments even with recourse to some excuse," he was quoted by the Fars news agency on Wednesday, September 12. "This company is obliged to either comply with its remaining commitments or pay compensation to Iran."
