The first international commercial flight since the fall of former Syrian President Bashar Assad landed Tuesday at the Damascus airport. The Qatar Airways flight landed at Damascus International Airport, greeted by the passengers’ relatives and friends inside a terminal building.

Ashad al-Suleibi, head of Syria’s Air Transport Authority, said Qatar had provided assistance in rehabilitating the airport, which had suffered from years of neglect as well as sustaining damages from periodic Israeli airstrikes.

“Honestly, there was a lot of damage from the (Assad) regime to this lively area and this lively airport and also the Aleppo airport,” he said.

Many passengers were Syrian nationals coming come for the first time in more than a decade.

Osama Musalama, who came from the United States, said it was his first visit since before the civil war that started in 2011.

“I lost hope that I would come back to Syria,” he said. “We were waiting for this moment and lost hope, but thank God now the country is back to its people.”

Separately, Jordanian state-run Petra news agency reported that a Royal Jordanian Airlines plane departed for Damascus on a test flight. The head of Jordan’s Civil Aviation Regulatory Commission, Capt. Haitham Misto, who was on board the flight with a team of specialists, said that the aim was to evaluate the technical condition of Damascus airport before resuming regular flights.

Since the lightning rebel offensive that unseated Assad a month ago, Arab and Western countries that had cut off relations with the former government have been reopening diplomatic relations with Syria’s new de facto authorities, headed by the Islamist former insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS.

If this article was shared with you by a friend or colleague, you may enjoy receiving your own copy of Travel Industry Today with the latest travel news and reviews each weekday morning.  It’s absolutely free – just CLICK HERE.