The Imam Khomeini International Airport serves as a substitute for the Mehrabad Airport, hosting international flights from Tehran. The airport, is located 30 kilometers in the south of Tehran, in the vicinity of the Tehran-Qom freeway and was built in an area of 14 thousand hectares.
The Imam Khomeini International Airport serves as a substitute for the Mehrabad Airport, hosting international flights from Tehran. The airport is located 30 kilometers in the south of Tehran, in the vicinity of the Tehran-Qom freeway and was built in an area of 14 thousand hectares. In 2016, Imam Khomeini Airport hosted 49 passenger lines, 7 charter lines, and 6 cargo lines, with 850 flights per week that link Tehran to more than 40 countries.
If you travel to Iran for the first time, we help you with our useful information. After a long plane journey, you arrive at the Imam Khomeini Airport (IKA) where located about 30 km (19 mi) in the southwest of Tehran. After that, you must pass the restricted areas. At the immigration control, the officials check the documents of everyone entering the country. If you have not already obtained your visa authorization number, prepare yourself for long queues at immigration. Furthermore, the process of obtaining an Iranian visa might take many hours.
After you get the permission of entering the country, you should retrieve your baggage at the baggage claim area. The last restricted area is Customs Inspection where your baggage is checked for illegal goods and Duty-Free limit. After that, the arrival procedures are finished and you arrive in the Arrivals Lobby.
Upon arrival, you should head for using one of the available means of transportation, unless you want to stay in one of the hotels that located in the Imam Khomeini Airport. There are three available airport taxi companies at the Imam Khomeini Airport including Seirosafar Taxi, Europcar and Taxilux. The stands of these companies are located in the Arrivals Lobby.
The Taxi fares to all 22 districts of Tehran for Seirosafar Taxi are as follows:
Type |
Price |
Sedan (Toyota & Renault Safrane) |
850.000 IRR |
SUV (Toyota RAV4) |
900.000 IRR |
Van |
900.000 IRR |
What’s more, we operate a taxi service to and from all Iran's airports. So, by paying a lower price, you can book and coordinate a taxi service to anywhere you want.
You can also use Snapp and TAP30, the Iranian equivalent of the ride-hailing application Uber for asking a taxi at Imam Khomeini Airport. For more information, click on the link below.
There is a bridge linking the airport lounge to the hotels in which, the entrance to the metro station is located in the middle of the bridge. Access to this bridge is available from the second floor of the airport.
Both of Hamrah-e Aval (MCI) and Irancell (MTN), which are the largest mobile operators in Iran, have stalls in the Arrivals Lobby. The Irancell mobile operator offers 3 SIM cards to each passport that has been stamped at least two times in the Iranian airports. So the mobile services are not available for foreign passengers who travel to Iran for the first time by Irancell. However, the Hamrah-e Aval mobile operator offers mobile services even to the first-journey passengers by scanning from the passenger’s passport and documents.
The prepaid SIM card prices are as follows:
Mobile Operator | Internet Charges | Price |
Irancell | 1 GB | 140.000 IRR |
2 GB | 250.000 IRR | |
5 GB | 390.000 IRR | |
Hamrah-e Aval | 1 GB | 150.000 IRR |
In order to access the hotels from Imam Khomeini Airport, there is a bridge linking the airport lounge to the hotels. What’s more, the access to this bridge is located on the second floor of the airport. You can choose between one of the Ibis Hotel and the Novotel Hotel. Novotel is a five-star luxury hotel with modern facilities and amenities. Novotel and Ibis hotels are actually a twin hotel. During your stay in four-star Ibis Hotel, you can use all the facilities of Novotel Hotel such as Café, restaurants, swimming pool, and Gym.
The local currency is Iranian rial. If you want to exchange your money, a currency exchange supplies you with foreign currencies where located in the Departure Lobby on the second floor. You must know that the foreign currencies have two rates on Iran’s currency market. The exchange rates in the free currency market are about twice the government exchange rates. Don’t exchange your money in the banks, because they exchange your money with the government rates.