The Russian airline recently transferred an Airbus A330-300 to Tehran for maintenance. There, the long-haul aircraft is to be overhauled by the technical operations of Mahan Air. The reason for this is also that they want to avoid western sanctions and also get “homemade” spare parts.

For the first time in the company's long history, Aeroflot is having a commercial aircraft serviced in Iran. The affected machine was flown to Tehran on April 5, 2023. A company spokesman for the state airline of Russia: “The maintenance of the Airbus A330 in Iran is carried out by the provider for a wide range of work. Mahan Air has the necessary material base, certificates and great experience, the provider carries out maintenance with a high level of quality”.

With brief interruptions, Iran has been under Western sanctions for decades. As a result, aircraft and spare parts can only be obtained on the black market. Many parts are made in-house. Russia wants to take advantage of the isolated country's know-how and already announced in March 2022 that it would work closely with Iran. This is intended to circumvent western sanctions as far as possible.