Jordan will provide national airline Royal Jordanian with a two-billion-dollar insurance cover to allow it to maintain flights to Europe and the United States, the official Petra news agency said Monday, September 24.
Transport Minister Nadr Al-Dahabi said the move answered an appeal by Royal Jordanian in light of the worldwide aviation crisis following the September 11 terror attacks in the United States, Petra reported.
Royal Jordanian urged the government to underwrite its insurance cover "by Tuesday morning at the latest or else it would be forced to stop its flights" to Europe and the United States. Royal Jordanian operates flights to 50 destinations worldwide, around half of them in Europe and the United States.
Company president Samir Majali said last week that the company suffered a 20 percent drop in reservations to Jordan and that profits were expected to drop by the end of the year, in the wake of the terror attacks.
On Sunday it scrapped a charter flight to Baghdad after international insurance companies refused to cover it because of the fallout of the attacks on Washington and New York. In the 10 months preceding the September 11 airborne attacks, Royal Jordanian saw 70,000 reservations and 40 charter flights cancelled, Majali had said on September 9.
He said these cancellations "deprived the company of receipts estimated at $12 million ". Majali said the airline's net profits in 2000 failed to top one million dollars, with just 1.2 million passengers, against $28 million in profits and 1.5 million passengers in 1999. ― (AFP, Amman)
© Agence France Presse 2001
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
