TEHRAN, April 30: The Iranian capital’s new showpiece international airport finally reopened on Saturday a year after being shut down by the armed forces, but was immediately hit by fresh controversy amid warnings its runway may not yet be safe. As the sprawling facility welcomed an Iran Air flight from Dubai, Britain and Canada told their citizens travelling in and out of Tehran to steer clear of it for the time being and instead take flights using Tehran’s old airport.
“We are aware of reports that the runway at the new Imam Khomeini International Airport in Tehran may not yet be suitable for use,” read a travel warning issued by the Foreign Office in London.
An almost identical warning was issued by Canada, another country that has frosty relations with Iran. The warnings were the latest in a series of setbacks to the new airport, which has been decades in the making and which Iran hopes will one day rival Dubai as a regional transport hub.
Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, one of the country’s most powerful institutions, stormed the new airport on the day it opened in May last year to protest the involvement of a Turkish-Austrian consortium, Tepe-Akfen-Vie (TAV).
The Revolutionary Guards argued that TAV also had dealings with Israel and charged that its presence was a threat to national security.
For now there is no role at the airport for a foreign company, and TAV is still waiting to see what will happen to the 15 million dollars it has invested. The first flight into the new airport on Saturday afternoon did land safely, and head of Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization said the travel warnings were baseless.
“They don’t have the right to make such comments. It doesn’t make any sense,” Nourallah Rezai Niaraki told reporters.
“After so much time working on this airport, we have made sure it is fully operational with no deficiencies,” he added, noting that a team from the International Civil Aviation Organization had inspected the complex just 15 days ago. Travellers who arrived on the flight also reported no problems.
“The airport is interesting. It is worth driving a long way when the facilities are more comfortable,” said Farnaz Afshar, a 30-year-old woman from Tehran returning from a holiday in Dubai.
And another woman traveller welcomed what she said was “very good service”. The airport — a project first launched three decades ago – was built at cost of 350 million dollars with a capacity of 2.5 million international and four million domestic passengers a year.—AFP