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Jordan, Syria discuss resuming flights to Damascus

January 24, 2019 at 12:32 am

A technical delegation from Jordan’s Civil Aviation Regulatory Commission (CARC) yesterday arrived in the Syrian capital of Damascus to study plans to reopen the Syrian airspace to the Jordanian flights, state-owned Petra has reported.

CARC’s chief commissioner, Haitham Mistu, said that the mission aimed at “examining the technical issues around the possibility of resuming the use of Syria’s airspace by the Jordanian commercial flights.”

Mitsu explained that the procedure was part of a mechanism that adopts international standards to assess risks, adding that it would be followed by “a comprehensive technical evaluation.”

“Based on that evaluation, the appropriate technical decision will be taken,” he noted.

Read: Russia and Turkey to act to stabilise Syria’s Idlib province

The Jordanian move was the latest in a series of other by Arab states to rebuild ties with the Syrian regime as the country’s devastating civil war draws to a close.

The visit comes following its announcement on Tuesday to appoint a charge d’affaires at the Jordanian embassy in Damascus.

Before the so-called 2011 Arab Spring, national carrier Royal Jordanian operated two flights a day to Syria – one to Damascus and another to its war-torn northern city of Aleppo. In July 2012, it suspended the services as an anti-government uprising escalated into a full-blown war, putting air traffic at risk. The suspension was reported to have incurred losses worth 19.4 million Jordanian dinars ($27.3 million).

In 2014, the airlines suffered further losses as it stopped its flights to Libya’s Tripoli and Benghazi, Iraq’s Mosul, and Yemen’s Sanaa and Aden.