Kurdish airport: passengers numbers plummeted 86% under embargo
Sulaymaniyah Airport
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) Passengers numbers at the Kurdistan Region’s Sulaimaniyah Airport declined by 86% after the Iraqi government imposed a flight embargo on the region, the airport’s chief said Thursday.
Shafaq News quoted Taher Abdullah saying in a press conference that the airport had used to record the arrival of 50.000 per month before the embargo, which declined after the measure to 6000-7000 per month.
Iraqi Alqurtas News quoted Abdullah saying in the same conference that the airport recorded the entrance and exit of 485000 passengers in 2017, a drop of 7 percent from the preceding year.
Abdullah said that despite the embargo, the airport maintained its rate of operations, with only one contracted company revoking its engagement with the airport.
The Baghdad-based Iraqi government had imposed an embargo on flights on Kurdistan’s Sulaimaniyah and Erbil airports following a vote for independence the autonomous region’s government ran in September, which Baghdad deemed illegal.
Recent reports have pointed to imminent talks between both governments to resolve pending disputes over the administration of the region’s airports as well as other contentious subjects.