BAGHDAD, 19 September 2004 — National carrier Iraqi Airways resumed international commercial flights for the first time in 14 years yesterday, flying between Amman, Baghdad and Damascus, although with few passengers on board.
The white and green striped Iraqi Airways plane from Amman touched down on the dull gray tarmac of Baghdad international airport at 11 a.m. (0700 GMT) in the blue haze of a September morning.
But it was an inauspicious return to the skies for Iraqi Airways. On that first flight there were no passengers at all, because the resumption of operations was announced too late for tickets to be sold, said airline official Fathi Nassar.
The airline had been effectively grounded since Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent UN sanctions imposed on the regime of toppled dictator Saddam Hussein. The company has one functioning Boeing 737 plane, a survivor of Iraq’s years-long status as an international pariah.
From Baghdad, the plane left for Damascus at 2 p.m., with its first passengers - an official delegation - in celebration of its comeback. It arrived in Damascus at 2:40 p.m.
The carrier will make the same flight route daily, Iraqi Airways foreign offices director Ayad Hamam told AFP. “All this we have done without any help from the Americans or the government,” Hamam said.
Shortly after the fall of Saddam’s regime, Iraqi Airways’ thousand-strong staff demonstrated in the streets for fear the US-led occupation administration would shut down the firm.
Fifteen Iraqi Airways planes were left grounded around the Middle East, in Jordan, Tunisia and Iran, after Saddam made his disastrous decision in 1990 to invade Kuwait, Hamam said.
In 1998 and 1999, Iraq did fly several planeloads of pilgrims to Saudi Arabia in defiance of the sanctions regime. And in 2000, Iraqi Airways resumed limited internal flights, to Mosul and Basra, despite the “no-fly zones” imposed by the United States and Britain.
Then on August 23, the 737 made a test flight from Amman to Baghdad for the first time since the airline’s planes were grounded by the UN sanctions. It then flew an Iraqi Special Olympics team to a meeting in Algeria, Hamam said.
Currently, Royal Jordanian also flies between Amman and Baghdad, where commercial aviation has been stymied by the constant threat of missile and rocket attacks by fighters.
