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Jordanian Airways Launches Regular Flights to Baghdad
A Royal Jordanian (RJ) Airbus 320 left Amman on Tuesday for Iraq as the first regular twice-a-week flight from Amman to Iraq since the 1990 Gulf crisis, aviation sources said.
The RJ has organized irregular chartered flights to Baghdad on humanitarian grounds since last November, but it had to ask for prior permission from the United Nations sanctions committee on Iraq for each flight.
Tuesday's flight was taken in the kingdom as the start of the regular twice-weekly flights to Iraq, and in the future, flights are expected to be conducted on Tuesdays and Fridays.
It is not immediately clear if the RJ will ask for prior permission from the U.N. sanctions committee for each of its regular flights in the future.
Air flights to and from Iraq were banned after Britain and the United States imposed no-fly zones in southern and northern Iraq following the 1991 Gulf War, triggered by Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
Jordanian officials insisted that commercial flights to Baghdad did not violate relevant U.N. resolutions on Iraq, a stand which was echoed by many countries which challenged the legalities of the no-fly zones spearheaded by the U.S. and Britain.
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