Qatar Airways will resume daily passenger flights from Doha to Baghdad, Basra and Erbil on May 10, restoring its full Iraq passenger network after months of suspensions imposed during the US-Israel war on Iran. The Doha-based flag carrier is also reintroducing dedicated freighter services into Baghdad from May 7, signalling a sharp pickup in confidence in northern Gulf overflight corridors that were closed or sharply restricted earlier in 2026.
The Iraq restoration is part of a wider Qatar Airways recovery plan that the airline says will return more than 150 destinations to its passenger network during the course of 2026. Qatar Airways had been one of the most heavily exposed Gulf carriers when Iranian airspace closures forced large-scale rerouting and outright cancellations, particularly on services into India, the Levant and central Asia. With airspace gradually reopening, the airline has been steadily rebuilding frequencies through April and into May.
Baghdad, Basra and Erbil sit at the heart of Qatar's strategic Iraq strategy, feeding both inbound business traffic into Iraq's recovering oil and reconstruction sectors and outbound diaspora travel through Doha to Europe, North America and Australia. The airline historically operated a mix of Airbus A320 family narrowbodies on the shorter Iraq sectors with widebody upgrades into Baghdad during high-demand periods. Daily frequencies on all three routes return at the start of the new schedule.
The freighter restart into Baghdad on May 7 is a separate but linked move from Qatar Airways Cargo, the Gulf carrier's freighter arm, which had been operating reduced services into Iraq during the airspace crisis. Iraq is an increasingly important market for general cargo, project freight and oilfield equipment, and Qatar Airways' restored freighter capacity will help unblock supply chains that have been bottlenecked through alternative Gulf hubs.
For Qatar Airways, the Iraq restoration is more than a route resumption β it is a marker that the worst of the Iran war airspace disruption has passed for Doha, and that the airline can now begin rebuilding its full network with the kind of route density that turned it into one of the world's most aggressive long-haul connectors. With 150 destinations targeted by year-end, the carrier is betting that confidence in Gulf-routed traffic is finally returning.
Compiled from publicly available aviation news sources. Featured image: AI-generated by AviationShop. This article is original editorial content; facts have been verified across multiple public sources.
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