On Friday February 10, a plane carrying paying customers, officials and reporters completed the first commercial flight between Dushanbe and Tashkent for the first time in 25 years.
The Boeing 737 owned by Tajik private airline, Somon Air, with 65 passengers on board departed the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, at 10 a.m. and arrived less than an hour later in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent.
Only 14 tickets were sold for the maiden flight. Aside from paying customers, other fliers included officials of Somon Air and Dushanbe International Airport as well as journalists.
Airline officials from both countries reportedly held a meeting after the jet landed at Tashkent International Airport.
“The Tashkent-Dushanbe-Tashkent flight, which the peoples of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have awaited for 25 years, was made possible by the willingness of the two nations’ leader to meet halfway,” Tom Hallam, chief executive at Tajikistan’s privately owned Somon Air, was quoted as saying by Russian RIA Novosti news agency.
The flights will make it easier for some travelers to make the trip between the two capitals. For the past 25 years, people have traveled to Uzbekistan by land through the northern Sughd province or through Tursunzoda.
Meanwhile, regular flights are expected every Monday from February 20 onward.
Somon Air has said in an official statement that it will fly once weekly until the end of the winter season, but that frequency could increase to twice a week in the summer.
An agreement to resume flights was signed in late November. On November 30, an Uzbek charter plane made a flight to Dushanbe, setting the model for the way forward. Both countries reportedly agreed on conditions for transit flights and air cargo traffic.
The air communication between Dushanbe and Tashkent was cut off in 1992 at Tashkent’s initiative and the issue of resumption of the direct air communication between the two countries has been raised at meetings between state officials of the two countries more than once.
