London and Tehran sign Britain-Iran flight agreement

TEHRAN — Iran’s state TV is reporting that Iran and Britain have signed an agreement to establish a total of 42 weekly passenger flights between the two countries.

Thursday’s report says the Iranian and the British civil aviation authorities will allow each country to maintain 21 weekly flights to various destinations in the other nation. The TV said there would also be unlimited cargo flights.

British Airways plans to resume its scheduled flights to Iran in July. The carrier halted flights to Tehran in 2012 amid rifts between Iran and the West over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. Iran Air, however, continued its three weekly flights to London.

Last December, Air France also said it would resume flights to Tehran for the first time in more than seven years, starting in April.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif (R) and his British counterpart Philip Hammond shake hands during a joint press conference in Tehran on August 23, 2015 (Behrouz Mehri/AFP)

In January, the head of Iran Air said the country was hoping to renew direct flights from Iran to the US.

“Iran Civil Aviation Organization is conducting talks on direct flights between Iran and the US,” Farhad Parvaresh, Chairman and Managing Director of Iran Air, said, according to Iran’s Mehr news agency. He added that “daily flights to New York used to take place before the Islamic Revolution and they will hopefully get resumed in near future.”