Tehran, Feb 23, IRNA � Managing Director of Iran Air (Homa) said on Wednesday its planes had 4,400 extra take-offs and landings during the unjustly imposed ant-Iranian sanctions in order to be able to refuel.

Farhad Parvaresh who was speaking in a ceremony to celebrate the 55th anniversary of Homa's establishment said that the western countries had always been after forcing the Iranian company to abandon flying.

'The international sanctions assisted them in approaching the point from where achieving that objective seemed very likely, since those sanctions had imposed intolerable pressure over Homa,' he added.

Parvaresh added that the founders of Homa had probably never imagined that the airline would face such a tough way to pave, but the conditions urged by the global oppression, especially during the years of the Iraqi-imposed war, helped Iran Air survive through very hard times and got weathered enough to survive even more.

He said that after the Rudbar earthquake, during the years of the Iraqi-imposed war, after the Mina fire disaster and the other Hajj pilgrimage catastrophes, during the crises in Libya and Syria and dozens of other catastrophic events, the Homa personnel were unscrewing the planes' seats and turning them into ambulances.

'The Western countries were not even selling spare parts to Iran and had blocked all of Iran's banking accounts in the world on the one hand, and on the other hand Homa was deprived of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) services and the Iranian cargo planes' entry to EU territory was banned,' he added.

Parvaresh referred to Iran's purchasing of 118 Airbus planes as a blessed development in renovation of the Iranian passenger fleet.
On Feb 21, 1951, the Iranian Airways and Persian Air Service merged to establish the Iran Air (Homa) and in March 1952 its domestic and international flights began.

By IRNA