Lebanon is set to gain its first new domestically registered airline since 1969, with start-up Mada Airways preparing to enter scheduled commercial service from the country’s north, L’Orient Today reported on June 10.
The carrier’s emergence follows the expiry earlier this year of the exclusivity arrangement that had given flag carrier Middle East Airlines a monopoly over Lebanon-based commercial aviation for more than five decades, opening a market that had been closed to domestic competitors since the year the deal was struck.
Mada Airways is the sister company of IBEX Air Charter, a private jet and charter operator based in Beirut and Congo, the report stated. The airline is awaiting its operating licence and the rehabilitation of Rene Moawad Airport in Qleiaat, in the northern Akkar region, from which it plans to operate exclusively.
The MEA exclusivity deal had barred other airlines from registering as Lebanese commercial carriers, though it did not restrict foreign airlines serving the country.
Rene Moawad Airport, a joint civil-military facility around six kilometres from the Syrian border, has long operated well below capacity, handling only a few thousand passengers a year. Its rehabilitation forms part of a wider government push to expand Lebanon’s aviation capacity beyond Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport.
That push also includes plans by MEA to launch a low-cost subsidiary, Fly Beirut, with services due to begin in 2027 using an initial fleet of Airbus A320s, as the flag carrier moves to defend its position in a market it no longer controls outright.
Lebanese expatriates have long criticised MEA’s fares as costly relative to carriers serving comparable routes.