RIYADH – Saudi airline Alwafeer will begin regular flights to Iraq this week, some 20 years after the kingdom stopped flights following Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, an airline official said Wednesday.

Jeddah-based Alwafeer, launched last year as mainly a carrier for Muslim pilgrims coming to Saudi Arabia, will make its inaugural flight to Baghdad on Thursday, said marketing director Saleh Bogary.

“Tomorrow is our first flight,” Bogary told AFP. “We will fly one flight a week to Baghdad (from Jeddah) and two to Basra,” he said.

When it launched last September, privately owned Alwafeer focused on charter flights carrying Muslim pilgrims to Jeddah — the main gateway to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina — from Niger, Chad, Libya and India.

But more recently the carrier, which operates three 450-seat Boeing 747s, has opened a weekly flight to Jakarta carrying all types of passengers, and received government permission to begin flying to Iraq.

The main target will be pilgrims, Bogary said. For years travellers from war-ravaged Iraq have been forced to travel overland to other countries to get flights to Jeddah, or take buses to the holy cities.

State carrier Saudi Airlines halted flights to Iraq after Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and never resumed them amid strained relations between Riyadh and Baghdad.

Even since Saddam was removed from power in 2003, the Saudi government has remained cautious about relations with Iraq, and still refuses to reopen its diplomatic mission in Baghdad, citing security issues.

Source: business.maktoob.com