TEHRAN – Following months of ups and downs, Turkey’s flag carrier Turkish Airlines resumed its flights to Tehran on Saturday after six months of suspension over the COVID-19 pandemic.

Although according to the schedule, 31 flights per week were to be carried out to Tehran, Shiraz, Tabriz, Isfahan, and Mashhad, now there will be only seven flights per week between Tehran and Istanbul, Alireza Majzubi, an official at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport announced on Saturday.

He also noted that the outbound passengers need to hold a health certificate with a negative coronavirus PCR test result, otherwise the boarding pass won’t be issued for them.

In late August, Turkish Airlines extended the suspension of its flights to Iran until October 1, reneging on its previous announcement for resuming flights to Tehran and four other cities of Tabriz, Shiraz, Mashhad, and Isfahan as of September 1.

Although Turkey resumed flights to many countries in June and July after few months of suspension over the COVID-19 pandemic, it kept its common borders with Iran closed, while these repeated delays in the reopening Iran-Turkey borders have damaged the tourism ties between the two countries.

As Turkey is a country through which many trips of Iranians living abroad and foreign nationals to Iran are made, the flight suspensions prevented several businessmen and students from continuing their activities and even left patients who want to go abroad for further treatment helpless.

The pandemic has taken a huge toll on Iran’s civil aviation sector with reports showing that airlines lost hundreds of millions of dollars because of flight cancellations during the busy New Year travel season in late March.

ABU/MG