AIRPORT

[MosJan]

 

Ստեփանակերտի օդանավակայանը դեռ պաշտոնապես չի գործում, բայց դա չի նշանակում, որ թեթև ինքնաթիռներն էլ թռիչքներ չեն իրականացնում․ ու դրան չի խանգարում նույնիսկ այս առթիվ ադրբեջանցիների բարձրացրած վայնասունը

[Yervant1]

AZERBAIJAN THREATENS TO SHOOT DOWN KARABAKH PLANES

July 18, 2014

The new airport terminal near Stepanakert

RFERL - Azerbaijan has threatened to shoot down civilian planes flying
to Nagorno-Karabakh if the sole civilian airport in the disputed
region reopens as planned.

The Karabakh Armenian leadership dismissed the threat, saying that
the first commercial flights between the territory and Armenia in
two decades would start as planned in May.

Arif Mammadov, the director of Azerbaijan's Civil Aviation
Administration, said the Azerbaijani government warned the
International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) last October that
it did not authorize any flights to Karabakh.

"We notified that the airspace over Karabakh is closed," Mammadov said,
according to the APA news agency. "The law on aviation envisages the
physical destruction of airplanes landing in that territory."

Mammadov said Baku sent another letter to the ICAO recently warning
that the disputed region's airspace was closed and "at the disposal
of Azerbaijan's Air Force."

"We asked the ICAO to notify the opposing side in order to prevent
negative incidents," he said, adding that the Montreal-based body
forwarded that letter to Armenia.

Bako Sahakian, the president of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh
republic, condemned the threat and warned through a spokesman that
any attempt to thwart the planned flights would meet with an "adequate
response" from the Karabakh Armenian military.

"If Azerbaijan resorts to such actions, it will trigger unpredictable
developments," Sahakian's press secretary, Davit Babayan, told RFE/RL's
Armenian Service.

"Such threats do not scare us, they only discredit Azerbaijan," Babayan
said. "We will go ahead with exploiting our airport as planned."

Flights to and from the airport, located 8 kilometers east of
Stepanakert, were discontinued in 1991 amid intensifying armed
clashes in and around Karabakh that degenerated into a full-scale
Armenian-Azerbaijani war.

Transport communication between the territory and the outside world
has since been carried out by land, via Armenia.

The Karabakh government decided in 2009 to reopen the airport, severely
damaged during the 1991-94 war. Its $3 million reconstruction is now
nearing completion.

A regular flight service between Stepanakert and Yerevan is scheduled
to be launched on May 9, a public holiday in Karabakh that will mark
the 19th anniversary of a major military victory over Azerbaijan.

Dmitry Atbashian, head of the local civil aviation authority, assured
journalists earlier this year that flight security "will be ensured 100
percent," despite the airport's proximity to the heavily militarized
"line of contact" separating Armenian and Azerbaijani forces.

Atbashian also announced that the Stepanakert-Yerevan flights would be
carried out by a newly established Karabakh airline, Artsakh Air. He
said its fleet of aircraft would consist of three Canadian-made CRJ200
passenger jets.

http://www.horizonweekly.ca/news/details/44502

[Arpa]

OKAY LADIES AND GENTLRMEN FASTEN YOUR SEATBELTS.

HERE WE FLY AGAIN?

How reliable is this?

 

THE LAUNCH OF STEPANAKERT AIRPORT IS A MATTER OF A FEW WEEKS, BELGIAN NEWSPAPER SAYS

by Ashot Safaryan

ARMINFO

Wednesday, November 5, 11:50

Le Vif.be, a well-known Belgian newspaper, has published an article about the Stepanakert Airport. The article says that Stepanakert is the only capital city, whose airport services no flights.

The source says that no flights have been made after opening of the airport, because the Azeri authorities have threatened to shoot down any plane, even a civil one.

Le Vif.be points out that the objective of the airport is to ensure air service between Stepanakert and Yerevan, the capital of Armenia.

The air service will become the only alternative to the mountainous road, which is more than 330 km long.

The article touches on Baku's territorial claims regarding the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic and stresses that in 1989-1992 Azerbaijan bombarded the city of Stepanakert.

The article also quotes Speaker of the NKR National Assembly Ashot Ghulyan as saying that the airport is to make civil flights only and that Baku's threats can receive similar response, however, "Artsakh never plays such barbarian games".

The source says that though a flight from the Stepanakert Airport caused an overexposure in Azerbaijan in June, nevertheless, the airport will be launched sooner or later. It is a matter of a few weeks, the article says.

===

Let-s fly.Let-s Sing Volare Cantare.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkWhkKVvqHU

[Yervant1]

NAGORNO-KARABAKH, A SELF-PROCLAIMED REPUBLIC

11:04, 07 Jul 2015
Siranush Ghazanchyan

By Mary Boland in Stepanakert
The Irish Times

The blue-and-white bird-like structure of Nagorno-Karabakh's airport
perches in the Caucasus Mountains like a shining, defiant emblem of
national pride. The departures screen lists an international flight
to Yerevan, the Armenian capital. Members of the airport's 120 staff
stand by to pass luggage through the latest model X-ray machine.

Authorities at the facility, which cost $20 million (â~B¬18 million)
to rebuild, say it has sophisticated satellite navigation technology.

However, there are no passengers - and no aircraft. The flight to
Yerevan is aspirational; the only way to get there remains a six-hour
drive through the mountains. The reason: any flights that land at or
leave this airport will come under fire from Azeri troops.

As a self-proclaimed republic recognised by no country in the world,
Nagorno-Karabakh considers itself a nation under siege. Located
within Azerbaijan's official borders but run by ethnic Armenians, the
landlocked enclave was the subject of a devastating war between 1991
and 1994, which cost some 30,000 lives and displaced a million people.

Nagorno-Karabakh has kept its de facto autonomy, butAzerbaijan
maintains its claim to it.

Shoot down

The airport, destroyed in the war, reopened four years ago. "In
2011 we wanted to start flights, but our neighbours intervened -
they said they would shoot down our aircraft," says Dmitri Atbashyan,
head of the statelet's civil aviation authority.

The threats are not exaggerated. Last year three military personnel
died after Azeri troops shot down their helicopter. Troops from both
sides have died in sporadic clashes on the border, in breach of a
1994 Moscow-brokered ceasefire.

With a wry sense of humour and a glint behind his aviator sunglasses,
Atbashyan is proud to show off the little-used airport - and tout its
advantages as a flying school, in which lessons involve close-range
sorties safe from gunfire. "You can get your pilot's licence here
for $6,000 [â~B¬5,400]; in the US it will cost you $31,000. And we
have some of the best pilots."

As if on cue, instructor Samuel Tavadyan, an ex-military man, starts
up a small Zenith plane and takes off. He shoots into the sky, then
ducks, weaves and does hairpin bends reminiscent of scenes from a
Warner Bros cartoon. After landing, he jumps out and walks away as
though he has parked a car.

The airport's staff are kept on the payroll and all systems remain
running "because with such sophisticated machines, it would be too
expensive to turn them off", says Atbashyan. He stresses that every
aspect of the facility complies with international standards, so it
should therefore be possible to operate it normally.

"The UN Declaration of Human Rights grants everyone freedom of
movement," he says. "This shouldn't depend on the status of the
country of that person."

No UN member state recognises this enclave of some 147,000 people,
despite its national flag, government, public institutions, army and
police force. In the eyes of international law, it is a country that
doesn't exist.

This reality is ever present a few kilometres away in downtown
Stepanakert, where the president, Bako Sahakyan, faces a lonely
challenge on the international stage. As a member of the Commonwealth
of Unrecognised States, Nagorno-Karabakh shares a bond of mutual
recognition with the club's three other similarly troubled adherents:
South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria.

"Our primary goal is to be integrated into the civilised and
international community," says Sahakyan, a balding, ruddy man in
his 50s.

Far from the front lines

The president is sitting in the boardroom of his presidential palace
overlooking the significantly renamed Renaissance Square in the
reconstructed capital, with its wide avenues, cafes and fashionable
shops. At this comfortable distance from the front lines, it's hard
to imagine that a low-level war is unfolding.

"Being unrecognised always forms the basis of our policies," he says.

"But you must know that everything we do as part of our state-building
- our legislation, law enforcement, judicial system, our elections -
are all established and operated according to international standards.

What we have to do is restore historical justice."

For Sahakyan, this means righting Moscow's 1923 designation of
Nagorno-Karabakh as an autonomous region within Soviet Azerbaijan.

"This entity was itself created artificially when it was forcefully
incorporated into Azerbaijan."

The conflict dates back further, to rivalry between the Christian
Armenians and Muslim Turkic Azeris who populated the area for
centuries.

Nagorno-Karabakh means "highland black garden", but locals call it
Artsakh, or "strong fortress". It is nonetheless deeply connected to
and dependent on neighbouringArmenia. Its citizens, more than 95 per
cent ethnic Armenians, hold Armenian passports, speak Armenian and
use the Armenian currency, the dram. And Armenia's 11 million-strong
diaspora is a significant source of funds.

As Sahakyan concedes, it is not easy to run a nation at war over its
very existence.

"Of course we think we have to settle this issue with our neighbour,"
he says. "We want to discuss, we want to negotiate. Unfortunately,
the other side is rejecting our proposals."

The centuries-old rivalries behind this decades-old conflict are far
from resolved. This country that doesn't exist will likely remain in
limbo for some time yet.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/asia-pacific/nagorno-karabakh-a-self-proclaimed-republic-1.2275522

http://www.armradio.am/en/2015/07/07/nagorno-karabakh-a-self-proclaimed-republic/

[MosJan]

STEPANAKERT, Artsakh (ArmRadio)—Yell Extreme Park, in collaboration with the Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh) Republic government, on May 24 announced the launch of tourist flights from Stepanakert-Shushi. This initiative, as well as the recently launched Artsakh-Armenia flights, has sparked outrage in Azerbaijan, who says it will damage the negotiation process.

Founding Director of Yell Extreme Park Tigran Chibukhchyan says the rage from Baku plays more of a role for advertising.

Flights have been carried out from the Stepanakert Airport since Artsakh’s liberation in 1991. The issue was politicized in 2008, when Artsakh authorities renovated the airport and announced plans to operate passenger flights. The airport also purchased two small planes for domestic flights a few years ago, used for agricultural purposes and tourist flights.

Regular flights have never been launched. However, helicopter flights regularly operate to and from the airport, generally carrying the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group Co-Chairs and high-ranking officials from Armenia.

The company is currently operating eight flights a day, and the demands keep growing, says Samvel Tavadyan, head of Aviation Department of the Artsakh Ministry of Economy. The flight duration is 25 minutes and costs 35,000 AMD per person.

 

http://asbarez.com/163870/yell-extreme-park-launches-stepanakert-shushi-flights/

[MosJan]

[MosJan]

STEPANAKERT, Artsakh—The Artsakh Republic recently launched flights on the path to increase tourism between Artsakh and Armenia. The Artsakh Foreign Ministry was asked to comment on the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry’s May 25 statement criticizing the operation of the flights in Artsakh, stating that it is an “illegal economic activity.”

“Artsakh has long been a normally developing country where people, like in any other country, live and implement programs in various spheres, including tourism,” said Artsakh’s Public Relations Head Artak Nersisyan in an interview with Armenian news agency Aysor.am.

Nersisyan said that Baku “not only tries to deny this objective reality, but also does not miss the opportunity to demonstrate his flagrant ignorance of the international conventions and legal norms of regulating civil aviation.”

Azerbaijani authorities continuously try to “divert the attention of the international community from the real problems hampering the negotiation process and condition,” continued the Artsakh official, “by the relentless attempts of the Azerbaijani side to undermine the negotiation process.”

In an interview with Tert.am, the Head of the Department of Aviation Samvel Tavadyan, said that last weekend, Artsakh has already carried six passengers with the newly operated flight. “Interest among travelers is high and we have been receiving many calls from abroad, regardless of it being a conflict zone,” he said.

[MosJan]

Rehabilitation of the Stepanakert airport is the sovereign right of Artsakh

 

June 27, 2019 213 0 Horizon Weekly Newspaper
(Armradio) – Artsakh has welcomed the amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) submitted by U.S. Congressman Brad Sherman, which blocks transfer of defense articles or services that improve Azerbaijan’s offensive air capabilities or air defense systems, which could threaten civil aviation.

“This initiative is topical, since Azerbaijan has not abandoned its threats to shoot down civilian aircrafts in Artsakh or to use force against the civilian population of Artsakh,” the Foreign Ministry said.

“The rehabilitation of the Stepanakert airport is the sovereign right of Artsakh and pursues purely civil and humanitarian goals, in particular, the exercise of such an inalienable right as freedom of movement. The ongoing Azerbaijani blockade has become a permanent and serious obstacle to the realization of the right to free movement of the civilian population of Artsakh, along with other fundamental human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other major international treaties. This position of Azerbaijan clearly demonstrates its open disregard for human rights and fundamental freedoms and is a continuation of its policy of collective punishment of the civilian population,” Spokesperson of Artsakh Foreign Ministry Ani Sargsyan said.

“Moreover, such actions are internationally wrongful acts of Azerbaijan and should be seriously counteracted by the international community,” she stated.