First state-run Iraq-Kuwait flights since 1990 set to start
Iraqis walk near Baghdad International Airport in 2004.
Iraqi Airways will make its first flights to Kuwait since 1990 on Saturday, Kuwait's KUNA news agency said Tuesday, according to Reuters.
Restoring air travel is the latest sign of reconciliation after the two nations resolved some major debt issues from the Gulf War, said Reuters, and last month settled a decades-old commercial airways conflict, Lebanon's Daily Star reported.
The last Iraqi Airways flight to Kuwait took place in 1990, Reuters said. Iraq's Saddam Hussein invaded the country the following year, triggering the Gulf War.
"Iraqi Airways [is] to resume flights to Kuwait on Feb 16 after 22 years of suspension," KUNA announced by text message late Tuesday.
Iraq's Fawwaz al-Farah, the director Kuwait's civil aviation authority, told KUNA there will be four Kuwait-Iraq flights a week, one of which will be direct, two will go by way of Najaf — a major pilgrimage site — and one via Kurdistan, the Star said.
Al-Jazeera had been operating some flights between the two countries, according to the Star, but this is the first state-run Iraqi Airways flights scheduled in decades.
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