Taking A Look On Iran Air’s Most Aged Aircraft

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There are still functioning aircraft on the Middle East carrier’s fleet that have been in service for many years. Iran Air’s fleet of planes includes a number of aircraft that have been in service for many decades. In reality, the majority of the company’s existing fleet has an average age of 20 years or more.

With the exception of a few ATRs, A330s, and aircraft from the A320 family, Iran Air’s fleet consists mostly of aircraft that have been in service for a number of years. However, despite the fact that the airline has attempted to refresh its fleet in recent years, placing orders with both Airbus and Boeing, things have not progressed as quickly as the carrier would have wanted.

The airline’s fleet consists mostly of Airbus aircraft (both narrowbody and widebody), with a 747 converted freighter serving as the lone operational Boeing aircraft in the fleet. It also possesses more than a dozen ATRs for close-range missions, as well as a few of extremely old Fokker 100s for backup.

The Iranian airline Iran Air presently has 43 aircraft, according to ch-aviation, however a significant number of them are not in use. The company’s fleet may be divided into the following categories:

ATR72-600 (13)
A300 (8)
F100 (7)
A320-200 (6)
A319 (3)
A330-200 (2)
A310 (2)
B747-200C (1)
A321-200 (1)

The majority of these aircraft are either in storage or being repaired, so when we looked at some of the carrier’s oldest planes, we only looked at the ones that were still in service at the time of the evaluation.

The oldest of the bunch
Iran Air operates an Airbus A300B4 (EP-IBG), which is 37.6 years old and is the company’s oldest operational aircraft. It was originally delivered to Karair of Finland in 1986 and has since flown for a variety of airlines, including Air Scandic and Air ACT, before joining Iran Air’s fleet in 2009. When it comes to flying time, the aircraft has logged 68,187 hours throughout 23,550 flight cycles as of December 2021.

Among the airline’s fleet of planes, the Boeing 747-200C (M) (EP-ICD) is the second-oldest, having been in service for 33.5 years. The cargo plane started its flight career with Martinair in 1988 and was delivered to Iran Air in 2008. It had been in service for 20 years at that point.

Another pair of A300 planes (EP-IBA and EP-IBC) are among the airline’s oldest aircraft, having been in service for 28 and 30 years, respectively. One of the airline’s aircraft, an Airbus A310 (EP-IBK), is over three decades old and is one of just a few of the kind remaining in service today. It is one of only a few of the type still in service.

Fleet of narrowboats
There are also several narrowbody aircraft in the Middle Eastern carrier’s fleet that are over a decade old and ought to be mentioned here. Three Fokker biplanes are among the oldest aircraft on display. Because the firm went out of business in 1996, any operable Fokker aircraft flying today will be more than 25 years old.

Currently, Iran Air operates three Fokker 100 airplanes (EP-CFM, EP-CFR, and EP-IDF), which are 29.88, 29.98, and 31.36 years old, respectively, and are still in service. EP-IDF, the oldest of these aircraft, having flown more than 40,000 hours and completed more than 43,000 flight cycles over its lifetime.

In addition, the airline runs a few of Airbus A320 aircraft that are more than three decades old. EP-IEE and EP-IEF have clocked 30.08 and 30.03 years, respectively, since joining Iran Air in 2009. Both aircraft have accumulated more than 55,000 flight hours since joining the airline.