Sanctions Against Syria

Posted 30/11/2011

The Arab League has approved a set of economic sanctions against Syria in a move that could significantly impact operations into the country.  The action is to penalise President Bashar al-Assad's regime for a bloody crackdown on protesters and will leave the country in growing economic isolation in the region.  The sanctions include travel bans on high-level regime officials, freezing of their bank accounts, blocking the sale of "nonessential" commodities to Syria, halting transactions with the Syrian central bank and ending financing for all Arab-funded projects in Syria.

At the present time international airlines will continue to serve the country, although flights are expected to be curbed in the coming months due to political pressure. It has emerged in the past couple of hours that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Civil Aviation authority has already ordered its carriers Emirates Airline and Etihad Airways to suspend flights to Syria from next week, although there has been no formal confirmation from the airlines.

The table below shows the current international schedules from Damascus.  There are also direct international flights to other Syrian cities, although these are much less prevalent than to the capital.  Alongside the direct flights, other disruption will occur, as many operators fly over Syrian airspace to travel within the region and flights will potentially have to take alternative and much longer paths in the future.

INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTS FROM DAMASCUS (non-stop weekly flights; November 14-20, 2011)
Airline	Weekly Flights	Weekly Seats	Destinations
Aeroflot Russian Airlines	2	232	Moscow
Air Algerie	3	486	Algiers
Air Arabia	11	1,650	Sharjah
Air France	3	447	Amman, Paris CDG
Alitalia	3	450	Rome Fiumicino
Austrian Airlines	5	603	Vienna
bmi British Midland	3	436	London Heathrow
Caspian Airlines	17	3,438	Ahwaz, Mashad, Isfahan, Kerman, Rasht, Tehran, Yazd
Conviasa	1	278	Caracas
EgyptAir	11	1,676	Cairo
Emirates Airline	11	3,144	Dubai
Etihad Airways	7	1,015	Abu Dhabi
FlyDubai	7	1,323	Dubai
Gulf Air	7	462	Bahrain
Iran Air	3	156	Theran
Iran Aseman Airlines	6	760	Ahwaz, Dashte Naz, Mashad, Shiraz, Yazd
Jazeera Airways	7	1,092	Kuwait City
Kish Air	1	294	Tabriz
Kuwait Airways	3	370	Kuwait City
Malev Hungarian Airlines	2	218	Budapest
Nas Air	11	1,466	Jeddah, Medinah, Riyadh
Qatar Airways	10	1,637	Doha
Royal Jordanian	7	616	Amman
Saudi Arabian Airlines	15	2,676	Dammam, Jeddah, Medinah, Riyadh
Sudan Airways	2	324	Khartoum
Syrian Air	103	11,668	Abu Dhabi, Algiers, Aleppo, Amsterdam, Athens, Bahrain, Beirut, Bucharest, Cairo, Copenhagen, Deirezzor, Doha, Dubai, Frankfurt, Jeddah, Kameshli, Khartoum, Kuwait City, Larnaca, Latakia, London, Madrid, Moscow, Paris, Riyadh, Rome, Tehran, Vienna
Turkish Airlines (THY)	7	1,050	Istanbul
Tunis Air	3	446	Tunis
Yemenia	1	112	Sana’a
Ukrainian Mediterranean Airlines	1	119	Kiev
TOTAL	273	38,644

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PLEASE NOTE: From March 7, 2012 schedule data for all news stories has been extracted from OAG Schedules iNET; All GDS data is based on a live GDS update on the day of publication; Traffic data extracted from IATA BSP system for the year ending December 2011.  All information is subject to change.