The new chief of Iran Civil Aviation Organization, Ali Abedzadeh, says he will make every effort to liberalize air ticket prices as part of the Fifth Five-Year Development Plan (2011-16).
According to Article 61 of the development plan, the government was supposed to liberalize the prices of domestic flight tickets in the third year of the 5th FYDP, that is 2013, within the framework of the second phase of the subsidy reform plan. Now it is two years past and the measure has yet to be implemented, Forsat-e Emrooz reported.
Despite claims made by authorities that ticket price liberalization would not translate into price rise, last summer (June 22-September 22, 2014) saw a 30% rise when the first steps were taken toward introduction of the policy. Later, officials insisted that the price rise was only a response to the appeal made by top managers of the country’s airlines to encourage service improvement.
Ali Abedzadeh, who is a veteran manager in ICAO and has 25 years of managerial experience at Aseman Airlines under his belt, is one of the outspoken advocates of air ticket price liberalization.
“Creating competition is one of the main products of price liberalization in the developed countries,” Mehr News Agency quoted Abedzadeh as saying. “You cannot expect quality unless you liberalize the ticket prices,” he added.
