But the news story did not say what airline was buying the planes. The state-owned company assembling the aircraft complained a few years ago that no domestic airline was willing to buy them.
The plane is the Antonov-140 or AN-140, called the IrAn-140 in Iran.
The AN-140 is a Ukrainian-designed passenger plane. Iran signed a contract with the Antonov firm in the 1990s providing for the assembly of 80 of the planes in Iran.
Iran has had much trouble assembling the planes and has turned silent about the program in recent years. But the obvious difficulty the government is having turning out even a handful of low-tech turboprop aircraft raises obvious questions about its claims to be mass-producing jet fighter aircraft, tanks and missiles.
Last November, Mohsen Musavi, the representative in Ukraine of the Iranian aviation firm HESA, was quoted by the Ukraine General Newswire as saying only 10 AN-140s had been assembled in Iran. He also said eight of them were flying with Iranian airlines.
But now, four months later, Mehr says the AN-140 will “soon” be flying with Iranian airlines. It said five of the planes were being flown by the Iranian Air Force and eight were ready for service with domestic airlines.
That total of 13 planes produced is not anywhere near the one plane per month that Iran announced would be rolling out of the plant when it opened 13 years ago. One plane per year is astoundingly slow.
Iran has been saying very little about the aircraft in recent years, although it was frequently speaking proudly of the plane a decade ago.
In 2007, Iranian officials acknowledged losing $120 million trying to assemble the 52-seat plane.
Ali-Akbar Mehrabi, the Iranian embassy economic attaché in Kiev, told the Defense-Express website the immense loss was attributable to two causes. One, he said, was the great delay in the delivery of parts made in Ukraine. The other, he said, was due to the fact that Ukraine changed the terms of its cooperation with Iran; that was not further explained.
A Doctor Vaziri, identified as the head of production, told Esfahan television in October 2006 that Iran spends $14 million to produce each plane. The version of the An-140 made in the Ukraine carried a list price of $6.7 million at that time.
Iran contracted with the Antonov company of the Ukraine to set up the factory at Esfahan. The plant opened early in 1998. The first plane flew in February 2001.
The contract with Antonov called for Iran to build 80 of the planes. The first models were to be assembled entirely from kits sent from the Ukraine with later aircraft to have an increasingly larger number of parts made in Iran.
One of the Iranian-made AN-140s is believed to have crashed on a flight on February 15, 2009, shortly after it was assembled. Iran announced that an AN-140 had crashed with the pilot and four men undergoing pilot training all killed. It did not say if the plane was an Iranian version of the aircraft or one from Ukraine. However, the website AirGuideBusiness.com later reported that the crashed plane was believed to be one of the Iranian-assembled aircraft. It crashed about 30 kilometers from the assembly plant.
The AN-140 is a 52-seat turboprop designed for short hauls. Its maximum speed is 575 kph (360 mph).
HESA said it employs 2,000 people at the Esfahan assembly plant.
