The number of commercial aircraft using Iranian airspace has doubled in the last year, mainly due to the insecurity in Iraq and Ukraine, an official with the Iranian Airports Company said Wednesday. International airlines including Air France, Virgin Atlantic, Delta and United suspended flights over Iraq in July prompting an immediate rise in traffic. A newly released one-day snapshot suggests that a previous upward trend has increased. “We recorded 1,015 overflights this week against 559 a year ago,” Ebrahim Shoushtari, deputy director for operations at IAC was quoted as saying by the Fars news agency. The number of overflights was also 32 percent higher in the six months to October 2014, compared with the same period a year ago.
