www.thestate.com An Iraqi Airways plane landed at Istanbul airport and then took off again for Baghdad, inaugurating its Iraq-Turkey route after a 14-year hiatus.
The Boeing 737-200 plane carried 70 passengers, including Iraqi officials, on its inaugural flight and landed at Ataturk Airport, the airport announced on its Web site. The carrier will fly two weekly commercial trips between Baghdad and Istanbul.
Iraqi Airway's Turkey representative Gokhan Sarigol said there was a great demand for both cargo and passenger flights. Prices for a one-way ticket on the 2 hour, 10 minute flight are around $400, more than a quarter of which is for security insurance, Sarigol told the Anatolia news agency.
Routes to Amman, in neighboring Jordan, and to the Syrian capital of Damascus resumed last September, also for the first time in 14 years. Iraqi Airways is also planning to start direct flights to Dubai next month with three trips a week.
Earlier this year, the national carrier also restarted domestic flights to the southern city of Basra as well as Irbil and Sulaimaniyah in the north.
Iraqi Airways jets were forbidden from flying outside the country by international sanctions imposed in 1991 following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait under Saddam Hussein.
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