ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The two international airports in the autonomous and calm Iraqi Kurdistan Region have plans to fly high, hoping even to beat the busiest Gulf airports in the number of transit passengers and flights.
Erbil International Airport (EBL), in the capital of the Kurdistan Region, began operations in 2010, and Sulaimani International Airport (ISU) started accepting flights in 2005.
Both were built after Iraq’s large minority Kurds gained autonomy from the Arab government in Baghdad, following the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein. While violence and attacks still rage in the rest of Iraq, the northern Kurdish enclave remains a haven of relative peace, tremendous economic growth and a magnet for foreign investment.
Sulaimani airport is focusing on attracting transit flights from Europe to Southeast Asia that are currently landing and refueling at the Sharjah or Dubai airports in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
“We will start working on this project next year,” Tahir Abdullah, the director of Sulaimani airport, told Rudaw.
“If that plan works out well, ISU will become a transit hub” Abdullah said. “According to one of our researches, if the European flights use ISU instead of Dubai for transit, their flights will be shortened by 45 minutes,” Abdullah added.
If London-Seoul flights currently refueling at Sharjah switch to Sulaimani instead, their flight time would be cut by up to 45 minutes, Abdullah said their research had shown. He said that for every hour in the air, the cost of fuel alone for cargo flights is about $20,000.
“This cost, particularly for long journeys, can be too high. Therefore, airlines will consider shortcuts seriously,” Abdullah said, adding that their high-flying plans have a good chance of success if the relative calm of the Kurdistan Region remains unchanged.
“We are currently contacting airlines to encourage them to use ISU, offering reduced taxes and lower fuel costs,” Abdullah said. He added, if things go according to plan, ISU will be able to sell 2.5 million liters of fuel to airlines, which would be supplied from the Dora and Beiji refineries, and cost no more than $1 per liter.
Last year 286,000 passengers used ISU, where the numbers are growing by 10 to 20 percent each year. Airport authorities believe passenger numbers could rise to 300,000 this year. That would still be less than half the nearly 7.5 passengers that went through Sharjah airport last year.
Erbil airport has even more ambitious plans, hoping to take on Dubai International Airport, which is ranked as the world’s third-busiest, and which handled a whopping 57.6 million passengers in 2012.
“Erbil can replace Dubai airport, for example for refueling. But we are currently discussing whether or not airlines are willing to use EBL,” said Erbil airport director Talar Fayaq.
“If fuel is provided from the local refineries, then EBL will be a big hub. We will have airlines use EBL,” she said, adding that Kurdistan Region authorities are working on plans to procure fuel from local refineries.
Last year, about one million passengers went through Erbil airport, where annual passenger traffic is growing by about 50 percent.
Officials said that security costs were one of the main challenges at the airports, with trained sniffer dogs alone being a major burden.
“Maintaining the dogs is very costly. We spend more money on each dog than we do on 20 airport officials,” said Abdullah. “Now, we have 40 well trained dogs in drugs and weapons inspection.”
