An official of Iran’s air travel services said on Sunday that the reason behind a lack of plane tickets is that more than half of the country’s aircraft are grounded.

Omid Khansari, a member of the board of directors of the southwestern province of Khuzestan’s Air Travel and Tourism Services, told ISNA that "Most of the planes owned by the airlines are grounded because they need parts and it is impossible to provide them due to the sanctions."

He added that only about 120 to 130 airplanes out of about 340 airplanes owned by the airlines are operational. 

Confirming the same data, Alireza Pakfetrat, the representative of Shiraz in parliament, said in August that due to sanctions the quantity and quality of Iran's aviation industry are decreasing day by day, noting that the number of passenger planes that remain operational have decreased as well as the number of flights in the country.

Alireza Barkhor, the deputy chairman of the Association of Iranian Airlines, also said last year that more than 50 percent of passenger planes are not working due to lack of spare parts, particularly engines.

Iran has suffered from shortages of civilian airliners since the 1990s and used a variety of ways to lease older planes or buy spare parts through intermediaries, but the technical state of its fleet has been deteriorating.

The 2015 nuclear agreement (JCPOA) suspended sanctions on purchases of Western aircraft and Iran began talks to buy new planes from Boeing and Airbus. A few Airbus planes were delivered but the Trump administration never approved the sale of US planes until Washington withdrew from the JCPOA in May 2018.