As hapless travellers will tell you, they might well end up staying at an airport for days because of delays or over booking or because seats are all suddenly taken by government officials. And that is despite the fact that many government officials seem to prefer to take almost any other airliner than the national one. Most are only seen on Iraqi Airways when they have official appointments.
In fact, last month things got so bad that Turkish aviation authorities banned Iraqi Airways planes from landing in that country because of what they described as a "lack of commitment to Iraqi Airways schedules”.
The delayed flights were causing chaos with Turkish air control, disrupting other flights and stranding passengers for, in some cases, days at Turkish airports, they said. For example, some Iraqi passengers, who had spent the annual Eid holiday in Turkey, ended up spending another two days at Ankara and Istanbul airports waiting for their Iraqi airways flights.
However after long talks between aviation officials inside the two nations, Turkey rescinded that decision and allowed Iraqi Airways to land there again.
Iraqi Airways officials could not be reached by NIQASH to comment on the long delays and bad scheduling. And the Iraqi Airways website only said maintenance work was being performed and communications systems were being updated.
However a source inside Baghdad airport - Ahmed al-Shammari, an airport security officer – said there were several factors involved. There were mechanical failures in the Iraqi airways fleet, there had been maintenance work being done on the communications systems inside the airport and there had been a large number of foreign delegations arriving in Baghdad over the past fortnight.
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