Iranian Leader Presents Berdymukhamedov with Two-Seater Airplane
While visiting Iran to celebrate the regional spring holiday of Nowruz this past week, Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov received a gift from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: a brand-new two-seater airplane, Iran's state presstv.com and lenziran.com, an independent video web site reported.
The Iranian-made light sports aircraft (LSA) is valued at $130,000; it can reach speeds of up to 300 kilometers per hour and and travel 1,000 kilometers, says presstv.com.
Iranian TV showed a beaming Berdymukhamedov being slapped on the back by a magnanimous Ahmadinejad as the small plane was unwrapped from a tarp with the colors of the Iranian flag. The gift was seen as an exchange for Turkmenistan's gift to Iran last week of 1,000 tons of wheat, lenziran.com reported.
The question is whether the Turkmen leader will ever actually fly around in this gift from his neighbor -- light sports aircraft are not regarded as particularly safe -- but maybe that's because they're associated with wealthy 70-year-old golfers as pilots.
To be sure, Berdymukhamedov likes to fly around in a helicopter to inspect his realm, where the "unexpected" presidential visits are usually greeted by throngs of townspeople forced to turn out and applaud and sometimes by dancing school children. But it's more likely that the plane is a loss-leader to get Turkmenistan to purchase a batch of the planes. An official from the Iranian company Dorna which makes the LSAs says Ashgabat is interesting in buying them for air traffic control and border patrol as well as personal use, regnum.ru reported, citing IRNA.
Turkmenistan has also purchased some Challenger 870 airliners from Bombardier, Inc., a Canadian company, and had earlier acquired four Boeing 737-700s in 2009, regnum.ru reported.
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