Qatar Airways Wants Compensation for Lost Airspace Access.


Qatar Airways will seek compensation from four Arab neighbors who have refused to allow it to use their airspace under the terms of a boycott now in place for more than three years.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) was competent to hear the dispute, after the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Egypt argued that the body’s aviation-only remit left it ineligible to decide on “security” matters.

“In line with the ruling of the ICJ and the legal precedent allowing the State of Qatar to continue its case at ICAO against the blockading States, Qatar Airways will pursue its case for appropriate compensation of the financial injuries inflicte as a result of the illegal airspace blockade,” in a statement released by the airline.

“The arbitrary and abusive measures that these four States have taken against us have devastated our carefully planned decades-long program for investment and growth in those countries; they have arbitrarily prevented us from serving hundreds of thousands of passengers, and transporting tens of thousands of tons of cargo to and from each of these countries annually,” it added.

The quartet, along with six other Arab nations, abruptly imposed a boycott on Qatar in June 2017, over its alleged links to terrorist groups, an allegation Qatar strongly denies.
According to the Saudi Press Agency, the UAE filed a formal complaint with ICAO in 2018 after “repeated incidents where Qatari fighter jets intercepted Emirati civilian aircraft during [scheduled flights].”

The two sides’ increasingly shrill denunciations of each other in recent months, with progressively more certain claims of rectitude and self-justification, have underlined the increasing intractability of the dispute, after resolution appeared possible late last year. The ICAO Council expects to hand down its judgment next year, but any decision will unlikely to leave Qatar Airways any more able to use its neighbors’ airspace.

On flights to points east and south of Doha, the airline has had to make detours over the Strait of Hormuz to avoid UAE airspace, involving what it regards unnecessary time and expense, while the inability to fly over Saudi Arabia complicates Qatari access to Africa. The ban on flights to Saudi Arabia and the UAE has led to erosion of considerable market share from the region’s traveling public.

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