Palestine closes its airline after more than fifteen years without airport.
The Palestinian Ministry of Transport and Communications announced this Wednesday the closure of Palestinian Airlines, considered a national symbol, and the sale of its only two planes after more than fifteen years without an airport.
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With the destruction of the Gaza airport by Israeli bombing during the Second Intifada, the company moved its base of operations to Egypt and maintained two Fokker 50 aircraft, one in Cairo, and the other in Amman, Jordan, which required a high cost of maintenance, reported EFE.
Ministry Undersecretary Ammar Yassin explained that one of the aircraft had been leased to airlines in Niger but the $96,000 per month contract was not renewed due to the coronavirus pandemic and flight limitations.
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Founded in 1995 by the newly created Palestinian National Authority (PNA), with the signing of the Oslo Accords, it was a national emblem towards the establishment of a future independent state, as was the strip airport.
The airfield, financed mainly by the German and Spanish governments, was inaugurated in 1998 in the presence of then US President Bill Clinton and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
With the beginning of the Second Intifada, the Israeli authorities bombed its installations on numerous occasions until it stopped operating definitively in 2007 after the takeover of the enclave by the Islamist movement, Hamas.
During this time, the Palestinian airline owned by the PNA connected Gaza with other destinations in the Middle East, until it moved its headquarters to the Egyptian town of Airsh, where it has not been recognized by the Egyptian Ministry of Aviation.
The company, which was a member of the Arab Air Carrier Organization, suspended its operations in 2005 and resumed them in May 2012, although it could not operate in the Palestinian territories.
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