Commercial Flights Resume in Iraq
Friday, January 9th, 2009
After 17 years without a single international commercial flight, Baghdad Airport saw a passenger plane from Europe land and taxi to the terminal. About 150 passengers flew from Denmark to Iraq on a Nordic Leisure Airlines.
All commercial flights from Europe and the Far East were stopped after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. Nordic Leisure is a Swedish airline and has received plenty of free publicity as the first to fly into the once embattled airport. Other international flights are slated for the coming days. Flights will come from across Europe and Asia, with one from Hong Kong scheduled to land sometime in the next few days.
Iraq’s national carrier is also seeking to expand. A preliminary agreement with Air France could see some Iraqi Airlines flights into Europe as early as next year. Of course, this will take time, but the groundwork is already being laid. Security is very tight at the airport for these first commercial flights. The violence has subsided somewhat, but bombings still occur.
Most of the passengers on the first flight were Iraqis returning home after months or years abroad. The Iraqi diaspora, caused by years of conflict, will mean a small but steady stream of traffic for those airlines that want to provide service.
During the recent conflict, many Iraqi Airways flights connected to cities in the Kurdish part of Iraq. These cities were considered much safer than Baghdad, where planes had to turn out all their lights and corkscrew upwards sharply on take-off to avoid insurgent rockets.
A majority of the flights in Iraq remain of the military variety. There is still a strong military presence at the airport. Perhaps that might add to the feeling of security. Without this feeling of security, it would be doubtful that commercial flights would ever have resumed.