Aviation History
Iraqi civil aviation began with the founding of Iraqi Airways in 1945, which grew into one of the Middle East's major carriers by the 1970s oil boom. Decades of war, the 1990 Gulf War and subsequent UN sanctions, and the 2003 invasion devastated the airline and the country's aviation infrastructure, grounding much of the fleet for years and triggering long-running legal disputes over seized aircraft. Iraqi Airways has since rebuilt a domestic and regional network, but it and other Iraqi carriers remain subject to an EU airspace/airport restriction tied to safety-oversight concerns that Iraq has been working to lift.
Iraqi Airways was established as a joint government-British venture; it began flights in 1946 on a Baghdad–Basra–Kuwait route using de Havilland Dove aircraft, later becoming fully state-owned.
Through the 1960s-70s oil-boom era, Iraqi Airways modernized with Boeing 707s, 727s and later 747s, building a route network spanning Europe, Asia and the Middle East from Baghdad.
Iraq's invasion of Kuwait triggered UN Security Council sanctions, including a flight ban, that grounded most of Iraqi Airways' international operations for over a decade and led to a long legal dispute with Kuwait Airways over aircraft caught up in the conflict.
The 2003 invasion caused further losses and disruption to Iraqi Airways' fleet and to Baghdad International Airport, setting back the airline's recovery by several more years.
Iraqi Airways gradually restarted domestic and then international flights, rebuilding routes to regional Middle Eastern and, later, European and Asian destinations.
Iraq reached a compensation settlement with Kuwait over aircraft seized during the 1990 invasion, resolving litigation that had encumbered Iraqi Airways assets abroad for more than two decades.
Iraqi Airways placed orders for new Boeing 737 and other narrow-body aircraft as part of an ongoing effort to modernize its aging fleet and rebuild passenger confidence.
Iraqi carriers, including Iraqi Airways, were placed under an EU restriction over safety-oversight concerns; as of the mid-2020s Iraq continues working to meet ICAO/EU safety benchmarks to have the restriction lifted — a status that remains actively evolving.
Iraqi Airways · FlyBaghdad
Wikipedia, ICAO/EU air safety list reporting, airline corporate history, aviation news outlets
Aviation Firsts
Al-Muthenna Airport (Baghdad West Aerodrome) — Baghdad (1933): RAF Cairo–Baghdad desert air-mail service began at the site in 1921; Imperial Airways began civilian flights in 1929; officially opened to civilian use 5 April 1933. Iraq's principal civil air terminal through the 1950s; replaced as Baghdad's main airport in 1970, later demolished. Two earlier British military airfields — RAF Station Shaibah (near Basra, 1920) and RAF Hinaidi (Baghdad, 1922–1937) — are dated earlier but have no confirmed institutional lineage to any civilian airport, so they are noted as context rather than separate civil-airport claims. · Wikipedia ↗
Baghdad International Airport — Baghdad (1970): Construction began August 1965, opened January 1970 as Baghdad's new main airport, renamed Saddam International in 1982; commercial operations halted 1991 under sanctions, resumed August 2000; captured by coalition forces April 2003 and renamed Baghdad International Airport, civilian flights resumed July 2003. · Wikipedia ↗
Al-Muthenna (1921 air-mail site, 1933 official civil opening) is the oldest documented civilian airport and was Baghdad's main airport until 1970, when it was replaced by today's Baghdad International Airport. Two earlier British military airfields (Shaibah, 1920; Hinaidi, 1922) predate both but have no confirmed civilian lineage.
Iraqi Airways (1945): Founded 1945 as a department of the Iraqi State Railways; began operating 28 January 1946; separated from the railway company 1 April 1960. The current company received rights to the "Iraqi Airways" name in 2003 after the Iraq War (sometimes treated as a legal discontinuity from the original 1945 entity, though operations continued). No earlier/competing Iraqi airline was found. · IA ↗ · Wikipedia ↗
dnata (United Arab Emirates): Began operating in Iraq's ground-handling market in March 2010, launching at Erbil International Airport (under Kurdistan Regional Government jurisdiction, not Iraq's federal Civil Aviation Authority) — the earliest documented foreign GH entry into the country by date. Not explicitly labeled a "first in Iraq" claim by dnata itself. Separately, the federal Iraqi Civil Aviation Authority (ICAA) later awarded, per Menzies Aviation's own 21 January 2021 press release, "the first license of its kind to be awarded by the ICAA to a foreign aviation services company" to MASIL, a joint venture of Iraqi Airways, Air BP, Menzies Aviation and Al Burhan Group, for cargo/ramp operations at Baghdad International Airport — a narrower, federally-scoped "first" claim that does not negate dnata's earlier entry at Erbil. National Aviation Services (Kuwait) separately secured a Baghdad passenger-handling contract from the ICAA in October 2020, about three months before the Menzies/MASIL license, but did not itself claim to be "first." Explicitly checked Swissport, Çelebi, Havaş and Aviapartner, with no documented Iraq entry found for any of them. (best-documented candidate found — not source-confirmed as literally first.) · AviationPros ↗