This was the Basra Team - with its Iraqi airport management counterparts. We came from diverse backgrounds, from airports and aviation-related businesses across America and beyond. Each came for his/her own reasons, but all were united by a common desire to make a difference in a country most of us knew very little about.

It was the latter half of 2003. An end to major hostilities had been announced and a disparate group of aviation pros was being assembled in order to get Iraq’s airports open to commercial traffic. Our team, led by former Olympia (WA) Airport director Doug Sandau, was tasked with breathing life back into the Basra Airport, located in Southern Iraq near the Kuwait border. It was a daunting challenge.

Working under the most austere conditions, we were tasked with bringing the airport back to life after decades of conflict, neglect, and international sanctions. Our initial reaction: Basra was in surprisingly better condition than expected.

While the airport had sustained some damage, much of it remained in relatively good condition. A 13,120-ft. concrete runway, taxiways, and ramp were in very good condition. The passenger terminal, exquisite in design with beautiful marble flooring and Middle Eastern architecture, seemed stuck in time, its old-style mechanical FIDS system announcing the arrival of flights from more than a decade ago. The passenger terminal was of two-level linear design — one end of the building for international, the other for domestic.

Years of neglect and sanctions had left the airport’s basic services in abysmal shape. Non-functioning water and sewage treatment facilities made living and working there more difficult. Airfield lighting vaults, along with many other critical systems, had been heavily cannibalized to keep them working due to a scarcity of spare parts.

Like a scene out of a Middle Eastern version of the TV show M*A*S*H, we lived and ate in temporary facilities. The heat was intense and the Iraqi insects relentless. The perpetually burning gas wells surrounding the airport made one pine for strict environmental protection regulations back home.

History

Basra is the largest city in southern Iraq, situated on the west bank of Shatt Al-Arab, 55 km from the Arabian Gulf and 545 km from Baghdad. Built by a German consortium of Straubag Bau AG, Bilfiger Berger and Universale in the 1980s, Basra Airport had been designed to accommodate three million passengers annually. But even in its heyday, the airport saw only a small fraction of that. Basra Airport encompasses approximately 2,300 hectares (5,687 acres) and is fully enclosed by a 27-km chain link security fence topped with three strands of barbed wire.