Armenia: Another Azerbaijani Airliner Lands at Zvartnots

While having dinner last night with Tom de Waal, Roelf Meyer, Richard Giragosian and a few others, it turned out the OSCE Minsk Co-Chairs were due to arrive in Yerevan. Unfortunately, they were delayed in Baku, but it pushed me to ask if they were flying direct. Those I asked didn’t know and I mentioned the flight between the two capitals in 2006 when an Azerbaijani airliner touched down with them onboard at Yerevan’s Zvartnots airport.

One of the two local Armenian journalists present looked confused and said no Azerbaijani plane has touched down at Zvartnot perhaps with the exception of when mafia figures from Baku descended upon Yerevan in the middle of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict to attend the funeral of a local mobster as Tom de Waal detailed in his excellent Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War.

Armenia’s “mafia” was also a powerful behind-the-scenes actor. It suddenly became visible in January 1993, when an Armenian gangster named Rafik Bagdasarian, known as Svo, was murdered in his Moscow prison cell. Svo’s body was flown home to be buried in the most prestigious section of Yerevan’s Toghmagh cemetary, and so, Svo’s old comrades from Azerbaijan decided to fly in to Yerevan to pay their last respects. For the first and only time in the 1990s, planes traveled between Baku and Yerevan and the gangsters arranged for gas and electricity supplies to be switched on for the three days around the funeral. Only when all the mafiosi guests had left did the blockade resume, and darkness descended once again.

However, I was pretty sure that one did and checked my old blog. Indeed, for the first time in recent years, an AZAL aircraft landed at Zvartnots on 3 October 2006 as A1 Plus and Today.az reported.

AZAL’s Tupolev 134 lands in Yerevan

03 October 2006 [20:31] - Today.Az

On Tuesday at about 11:30 a.m. for the first time in recent history Tupolev 134 belonging to AZAL landed in Yerevan’s “Zvartnots” airport.

Gevorg Abrahamyan, head of the press service of “Zvartonots”, said that the OSCE Minsk group Co-Chairs arrived in Armenia on that very plane. A1+

Just checked the Zvartnots online arrival information and yes, the Co-Chairs again flew direct to Yerevan from Baku (screenshot here). Such a simple step forward and one that represents what could be. If only more exchanges between Armenian and Azerbaijan journalists and civil society activists could resume and the direct route be reinstated if only for such visits.