Europe’s Airbus Group SE signed a firm contract on Thursday to sell 100 jets to IranAir, completing a return by Western plane giants and paving the way for deliveries to start next month, a year after sanctions against Iran were lifted.
The deal took weeks of shuttling between Airbus headquarters in Toulouse, France, and Tehran, complicated by a shortage of expert legal advice as Iran completes its biggest commercial deals with the West since its 1979 Islamic revolution.
Confirming details first reported by Reuters, Airbus said almost half the jets would be for short to medium routes and that deliveries would start early next year.
The contract includes 46 of the narrrow-body A320 family which includes the A321 model, 38 long-haul A330s and 16 of Europe’s newest long-range model, the A350.
Such a deal would be worth US$18 billion to US$20 billion at list prices, depending on variants flown, but Iran is expected to receive steep discounts from foreign manufacturers as its aviation renewal coincides with a drop in demand elsewhere.
The head of IranAir was quoted earlier as saying the value of the contract would not exceed US$10 billion.
It is expected to be followed by a formal deal to buy turboprop aircraft from ATR, half-owned by Airbus.
The breakthrough comes days after Iran signed a US$17 billion deal with Boeing Co for 80 jets and is expected to sharpen efforts by the US company to persuade the incoming US administration to allow the trade to go ahead, aviation experts said.
“When Airbus and ATR aircraft start going into Iran, Boeing will point to that to argue that it should implement its own deal,” an aviation source who closely followed the talks said.
Despite rivalries, the Airbus and Boeing deals with Iran are unusually intertwined because each depends on continued US clearances for the sale of planes built with US parts.
“Everyone has an interest in moving quickly. The Iranian government wants to show results from the nuclear deal; Airbus wants to get deliveries moving and Boeing wants the leverage it can get from European deliveries to Iran,” another source said.
Airbus said the deal was subject to US Treasury export licenses granted in September and November this year.
Republican critics of the nuclear pact want Trump to block the aircraft deals and have sought to hamper them by voting to tighten restrictions on use of the US financial system.
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