Baghdad: Iraqi Airways, the country’s national carrier will resume flights to the capital of neighbouring Syria for the first time since the war there erupted in 2011, a spokesman said Thursday. The airline will operate a weekly service from Baghdad to Damascus starting Saturday, spokesman Layth al-Rubaie told this agency Friday.
Rubaie said the resumption of flights between the two neighbours was ‘important’, citing bilateral trade, tourism and ‘the size of the Iraqi community living in Syria’.
The Syrian Transport Ministry welcomed the decision in a statement on its official Facebook page.
Rubaie said the last flight from Baghdad to Damascus took place in December 2011, before the service was suspended due to the conflict that erupted in Syria that year. Most airlines stopped flying over Syria after the conflict broke out, with many taking longer routes to circumvent the war zone.
But the conflict has wound down in recent years, after major regime advances against rebels and jihadists with Russian military backing since 2015. Damascus has been largely spared the violence.
In April, the Syrian government said it had agreed to allow regional aviation giant Qatar Airways to resume flights over the country. “The agreement came on the principle of reciprocity, as ‘SyrianAir’ crosses Qatari airspace and never stopped flying to Doha throughout the war,” the Syrian Transport Ministry said at the time. The use of Syrian airspace would see ‘increased revenues in hard currency for the benefit of the Syrian state’, it added.
It should be mentioned here that Jordanian officials have also visited Damascus to discuss plans to reopen Syrian airspace to Royal Jordanian’s commercial flights.
AFP
