{"id":633,"date":"2004-09-18T12:21:29","date_gmt":"2004-09-18T16:21:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/wordpress\/?p=633"},"modified":"2004-09-18T12:21:29","modified_gmt":"2004-09-18T16:21:29","slug":"please-observe-the-seat-belt-sign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=633","title":{"rendered":"Please observe the seat-belt sign"},"content":{"rendered":"

The BBC<\/em> reports<\/a> that Iraqi Airways has resumed international service with a flight from Jordan bound for Baghdad then onward to Damascus. It was unclear whether there were passengers onboard but it seems likely the plane itself was the same used in a test flight last month, a newly-purchased Boeing<\/a>, since it’s the only one Iraqi Airways has available. <\/p>\n

Soros’s group Iraq Revenue Watch reported last February<\/a> that the Open Society Institute had obtained a document showing that 75 percent of the country’s air sector had been sold off to the powerful Khawwam al Abdul Abbas family, “reportedly sanctions-era oil-smugglers with close ties to the Saddam regime<\/a>,” in a no-bid, secret deal.<\/p>\n

This is the pdf report:
\nControlling Iraq’s Skies: The Secret Sell-off of Iraq’s Air Industry<\/a><\/p>\n

I’ve spent a couple of hours trying to put together an update without success. But I can say that whomever currently controls Iraqi Airways is in for a rough ride. As USA Today<\/em> reported last year in a piece<\/a> they did on the airline, “Airlines in other countries that suffered international isolation have found it difficult to regain market share and re-establish flight networks.”<\/p>\n

The former Yugoslavia was cited as an example.<\/p>\n

Update 9\/19 @ 11:47am:<\/strong> Air-Iraq<\/a>, Dr. Ahura F. Khaleghi Yazdi’s project, was formerly Sky Airlines<\/a>. Maybe the name changed because it was too similar to SkyLink-USA<\/a> which USAID announced in May 2003<\/a> was given a $2.5 million initial award to manage Iraq’s airports. Yazdi lists “Assessment and resolution of the former Iraqi Airways<\/a>” amongst the goals of Air-Iraq under the Iraq Aerospace-Aviation Program (IAP) but it’s yet to be updated.<\/p>\n

Have you ever looked through the Coalition Authourity<\/a>‘s pdf file of contracts awarded? It’s filled with all sorts of quizzical items like $150,000.00 for winter jackets for Kirkuk police. Where did they go to buy them, Rodeo Drive? <\/p>\n

According to Iranian, a commenter in this thread<\/a>, the sign that Yazdi’s plan to liberate Iran on October 1st is in motion will be this Wednesday when Iran stops producing oil.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The BBC reports that Iraqi Airways has resumed international service with a flight from Jordan bound for Baghdad then onward to Damascus. It was unclear whether there were passengers onboard but it seems likely the plane itself was the same … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-ad","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}