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British Airways resumes direct flights to Iran

Xinhua, September 1, 2016 Adjust font size:

British Airways (BA) has resumed direct flights to Iran, the flagship British carrier announced Thursday.

The first BA plane to Iran, a Boeing 777, will depart from London Heathrow at 9:10 p.m. local time (2010 GMT) after the service was suspended in October 2012. Six return flights per week will operate between the British capital and Tehran, before a daily service starts later this year.

BA, which ran a three-flights-a-week service to Tehran up to four years ago and first flew into the Iranian capital in 1946, becomes the second European airline to resume flights into the country, after Air France brought an eight-year break to an end in April.

"The Iranians have been extremely helpful in setting up this important new route and have been as keen as we are for the service to start," said a BA spokeswoman.

"Tehran is an important destination for British Airways and we wanted to ensure that the service we offered met the highest standards our customers rightly expect of us from day one," she added.

The resumption of flights Thursday follows the lifting of some sanctions against Iran in January after the International Atomic Energy Agency said the Iranian government had met its obligations as part of a nuclear deal with six world powers. Endi