Iran Press/Iran News: Salam is the second of three at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport (IKIA) and is the first air terminal designed and built by Iranian experts.
The air terminal which inaugurated by President Hassan Rouhani on Tuesday, will increase the airport’s overall annual capacity by 80 percent to about 12 million passengers, officials of the IKIA Airport City told Tasnim news agency.
The project was part of an expansion plan which included building the third terminal named Iranshahr. French industrial group Bouygues and Aéroports de Paris signed a preliminary deal in January 2016 to build and run the new terminal.
The company as well as its fellow French partner Aeroports de Paris, however, canceled the $2.8 billion agreement in 2017, citing failure to get financial backing from international banks, which are still wary of US sanctions over their activities in Iran.
President Hassan Rouhani inaugurated IKIA's Salam Terminal in southwest Tehran, June 18, 2019
Iran had hired the Netherlands Airport Consultant Company (NACO) as its main adviser in the project to expand IKIA’s capacity to 30 million passengers.
NACO and the French companies were among scores of international firms which rushed to Iran to establish a position as the country re-opened for business after the lifting of sanctions in early 2017.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of Salam Terminal, President Rouhani appreciated development of the country’s air industry and said, “Today, we are able to provide other countries with services in many technical and engineering fields, in a way that officials of foreign countries state in bilateral meetings that the Iranian companies’ quality and pace are so much better than other countries.” 101/215
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