Airlines begin canceling flights to Middle East
March 18.

Expatriates from different countries line up at a
check-in counters at the Kuwait International
Airport in Kuwait City.		 CAIRO, Egypt, March 18 —  Airlines around the world began canceling flights to the Middle East on Tuesday as fears of a war in Iraq kept passengers away. British Airways said it would suspend flights to and from Israel and Kuwait beginning Wednesday and pull its staff from those countries in light of a travel advisory issued by Britain. Thai Airways International is suspending flights from Bangkok to Kuwait and Bahrain beginning Thursday.

BRITISH AIRWAYS also reduced its London to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, service from twice to once daily but is continuing to fly to Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
       In August 1990, a BA jumbo jet with nearly 400 passengers and crew on board was stuck on the tarmac in Kuwait after Iraq invaded. It was many weeks before some of the passengers and crew were able to return home. The plane was eventually destroyed in the Gulf War.
       Swiss International Air Lines said it would drop two of its six weekly connections between Zurich and Cairo starting Thursday due to “lack of demand” it blamed on the situation in the Middle East.
       Israel’s national airline, El Al, said it was suspending close to 15 percent of its flights over the next three weeks. It has suffered a drop in passengers that stems from a sagging economy and war-related fears.
       Out of 200 flights from Tel Aviv, 29 will be canceled. Some of the flights are to New York and Paris, El Al said.
       “The timetable changes are brief, limited and temporary,” the company said.
       Several international airlines canceled flights to Lebanon on Tuesday “for commercial reasons,” said Khaled Saab, chairman of Beirut International Airport.
       
CANCELLATION POLICIES EASED
       Among the airlines that canceled their flights to Beirut were Bulgarian, which only had two passengers, and Romania’s state-run Tarom, which had only six, Saab said. Instead of three flights scheduled from Paris for Air France and Lebanon’s Middle East Airlines, there will be one MEA flight on Tuesday, he said.

Major U.S. airlines announced last week they will make it easier for passengers to change tickets if the United States goes to war in Iraq, in hopes of assuring nervous travelers.
       Air France also said it will waive some restrictions on ticket exchanges in response to tensions in the Middle East, and Germany’s Lufthansa said the issue was under consideration Tuesday. Neither had canceled any flights yet.
       Thai Airways said its contingency plans include changing Thailand-European flight routes to five alternatives to ensure maximum passenger safety in case of war.
       The national carrier for Denmark, Norway and Sweden, SAS, has no flights to the Mideast region and said its flights to Asia avoid the airspace already. Finnair, which flies to Dubai, has not been affected.
       Italy’s national airline Alitalia has not canceled any flights to the Middle East for the time being.
       Capt. Ahmed El Nadi, chairman and chief executive of EgyptAir, said last week the Egyptian flag carrier was considering cutting flights or merging routes after a seeing a “big cancellation” in tickets from European and Far Eastern flights to Egypt.
       On Tuesday, an EgyptAir official said the airline would cancel one of its four weekly flights from Cairo to New York as well as one of its three weekly flights to Tokyo. The official also said the airline had added flights to evacuate Egyptians from Kuwait.