Algeria announce restore its flights with Syria after years of interruption
On Tuesday, the Algerian Ministry of Transport announced the resumption of flights to both Syria and Lebanon.
The Algerian Ministry of Transport stated in a statement published on its official Facebook page that the decision came based on directives from the Algerian President, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, to activate flights from Algeria towards Beirut and Damascus and then to Algeria again at a rate of one flight every week starting on December 21.
According to the statement, the flights schedules will be two flights weekly, starting January 9, 2024.
Flights between Algeria and Syria stopped about 12 years ago, and flights between Algeria and Lebanon also stopped following the spread of the Coronavirus in 2020.
In May 2017, Algeria’s ambassador to the Syrian government, Saleh Boucha, pledged that his country’s airlines would be the first foreign company to return to operating flights to Syria, especially with the presence of a large Syrian community in Algeria.
The statements of Algerian ambassador, who completed his duties in Damascus in October 2019, came during a meeting with the Syrian Minister of Transport at the time, Ali Hammoud, who stressed the importance of restarting the Algerian Airlines to Damascus, while the Algerian ambassador stressed the importance of Algeria being the first to Syria, explaining that the Algerian embassy in Syria wasn’t closed throughout the war in Syria.
Last June, the Syrian Foreign Minister, Faisal al Miqdad, received a copy of the credentials of Kemal Bouchama, as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Algeria in Damascus.
The Syrian Foreign Minister, visited Algeria twice recently, as the visits aim of strengthening bilateral relations between the two countries and ways to develop them, in addition to discussing the latest developments on the Arab and international affairs.
In 2011, Algeria had previously refused to withdraw its ambassador, Ammar Ballani, after a decision issued by the Arab League calling for the withdrawal of Arab ambassadors from Syria, justifying this as a sovereign matter for Algeria, and it wouldn’t abide by the decision.
Algeria had previously sought the return of Syria, represented by the Damascus government, to the Arab League prior to the summit, which it hosted in the Algerian capital in November 2022, but some Arab countries refused to return, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
The Syrian president, Bashar al Assad attended the Arab Summit in the Saudi Capital, Riyadh.
Several diplomatic visits took place between the Syrian government and Algeria, based on the uninterrupted relations between the two parties, to discuss the possibility of supplying Algerian gas to Syria, however, these meetings didn’t achieve any results in this regard.
