TEHRAN - Tehran's new showpiece airport is finally due to reopen Saturday after being dramatically shut down by Revolutionary Guards a year ago over the involvement of a Turkish consortium, aviation authorities said Friday.
"All flights to and from the United Arab Emirates will be handled by Imam Khomeinei International Airport (IKIA) from 1030 GMT on April 30, 2005" Iran's Civil Aviation Organization (CAO) website said.
CAO authorities said that flights to and from the Gulf states of UAE (Dubai and Sharjah), Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait would be handled by the new complex as of May 9. Flights to and from Saudia Arabia would continue to use Tehran's old airport of Mehrabad.
The CAO website set no date for the handling of other international connections.
Tehran's Mehrabad airport flight information had no word on the flights using the new airport and the only number provided on IKIA's website was not answered when contacted.
Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, one of the country's most powerful institutions, stormed the new airport on the day it opened in May 2004 to protest at the involvement of Turkish-Austrian consortium Tepe-Akfen-Vie (TAV).
The Revolutionary Guards argued that TAV also had dealings with arch enemy Israel, and charged that its presence at the airport in the middle of the desert south of the capital was a threat to national security.
Earlier this month Transport Minister Mohammad Rahmati -- whose predecessor was impeached partly because of hardline objections to the contract -- suggested that when the new airport did reopen there would probably be no role for a foreign company.
The airport -- a project first launched three decades ago -- was built at a cost of 350 million dollars with a capacity of 2.5 million international and four million domestic passengers a year.
But it has been hit by a series of delays, damaging an effort to build a regional transport hub that will eventually be able to handle 40 million passengers a year.
Tehran's current international airport, Mehrabad, is situated close to the city centre, doubles up as a military airstrip and is badly overstretched.
The new airport is less convieniently located in the desert to the south of the badly congested capital.
04/29/2005 12:15 GMT