SHAFAQNA- Iraqi Airways, has announced that it will resume Saturday flights to the capital of neighbouring Syria since the war eight years ago.
Iraqi Airways will operate a weekly service from Baghdad to Damascus starting Saturday, spokesman Layth al-Rubaie told AFP.
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 since 2015, with many taking longer routes to circumvent the war zone.
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 Syrian Air 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, France24 reported.
Doha severed ties with Damascus in the wake of the foreign-backed militancy in Syria, and supported the so-called armed opposition groups in the conflict-plagued Arab country.
Qatar Airways kept its planes at bay and took longer routes to circumvent the war zone, a policy that was also adopted by most other international airlines.
On December 27, 2018, a flight from Damascus landed in Tunisia’s Monastir Habib Bourguiba International Airport, marking the first direct flight between the two countries since the outbreak of the Syria crisis.
Private Syrian airline Cham Wings Airlines announced on July 16, 2016, that it had started running flights between Damascus and the southern Iraqi port city of Basra, press tv reported.