Syrian Air (Syrianair)

Is Syrian Air safe?

Syrian Air's accident record is long and mostly clean: its last fatal accident was in 1967. The rest of the picture is weaker. After more than a decade of sanctions, the airline began 2026 with three working aircraft. It is rebuilding with second-hand A320s, and its home airport sits in airspace that EASA rates high risk. We score it 67. That is a little above Iraqi Airways (63) and well below Middle East Airlines (78), which flies newer Airbus jets from a similar neighbourhood.

Syrian Air's accident record

The airline, officially Syrian Arab Airlines and listed by IATA as Syrianair, last had a fatal accident on 6 February 1967. A DC-3 approaching Aleppo in poor visibility descended below the glide path, hit a building and crashed short of the runway, killing 8 of the 16 on board. Since then the aircraft it has lost were mostly lost to violence. In March 1976 a rocket-propelled grenade struck a Yak-40 at Beirut while Lebanon's prime minister was boarding. As on every airline page, we count attacks separately from accidents.

Three damage events fall inside our 20-year window, none with injuries:

• Stockholm, December 2006. A 747SP taxiing to the gate at Arlanda was guided by a docking display that a handling agent had set for a standard 747, which is longer. Sweden's investigators traced the error to the airport's type codes and the handling company, not the crew.
• Damascus, October 2008. A Falcon 20 business jet run by the airline undershot the runway on an ILS approach and hit the localizer antenna, then landed safely.
• Over Duma, September 2012. A Syrian military helicopter hit the tail of an A320 climbing out of Damascus and sheared off the top of the fin. The A320 landed safely; the helicopter crashed.

Two of the three were caused by others, so they weigh lightly in the score.

A decade of sanctions

The EU and the US placed Syrian Air under sanctions during the civil war, and the US Treasury list also tied it to Iran's Revolutionary Guard. That meant no new aircraft, no spare parts from Airbus and no Western maintenance support. The six A320s it bought new in 1998 and 1999 were gradually withdrawn and now sit at Damascus. Two used A320s arrived through Iran in 2022, outside normal channels.

That changed after the Assad government fell in December 2024. The US Treasury removed Syrian Arab Airlines from its sanctions list on 30 June 2025, as part of the order ending the Syria sanctions programme, and the EU also began lifting its measures in 2025. In August 2026 two A320s built in 2009 and 2012 arrived from Heston Airlines of Lithuania. The airline said Syrian engineers checked them with two international maintenance firms. By October it had six aircraft flying, against three at the start of the year, and it plans 12 by the end of 2026, all of them used A320s. In October 2026 it showed a new green and gold livery. It has also hired about 50 pilots and 35 engineers. Rapid growth with new staff, in a fleet that had little support for a decade, is the main thing to watch.

Who checks Syrian Air?

The Syrian Civil Aviation Authority. Syria is not on the FAA list because no Syrian airline flies to the US, and no Syrian airline is on the EU Air Safety ListEU Air Safety ListThe European Commission's list of airlines banned or restricted from flying in EU airspace because they do not meet international safety standards.More in the glossary. Syrianair is on IATA's member list, under the codes RB and SYR, and IATA membership normally requires an IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary audit every two years. Yet when we searched IATA's IOSA registry on 28 October 2026, under Syria, Syrianair and SYR, it was not there. So no current outside audit backs up a regulator that is still rebuilding. We score oversight 55, about five points below an IOSA airline from a weak or unrated regulator that is not on the EU list, such as Biman. Syria's investigators have published almost nothing in recent years, so we found no serious incidents to report. With so little reporting, we do not take that as a clean record.

Flying into Damascus

EASA's bulletin for Syria, revised on 1 October 2026, tells European airlines not to fly at any level in the south-west of the country, which includes Damascus. It also advises against flying below FL260 elsewhere. It cites Israeli strikes, interceptions of Iranian missiles heading for Israel and Jordan, and armed groups with rockets, drones and shoulder-fired missiles. EASA notes that Syria now shares airspace information better than before, but control of the airspace is still fragmented. Syrian Air has no choice about its home base. If you fly with it, you will take off and land in the area EASA tells its own airlines to avoid.

Before you fly

Check whether your flight is operated by Syrian Air itself or by a leasing partner. On some routes, including its return to Europe, the airline used aircraft and crews from Heston Airlines, an EU operator. From May 2025 Cham Wings, now Syria's private airline Fly Cham, also flew its A320 YK-BAG for Syrian Air, according to a flight-tracking specialist quoted by Daraj, before the jet passed to Syrian Air in June 2025. Read EASA's Syria bulletin, which runs to 30 November 2026, and book a fare you can change, since flights in the region were retimed and cancelled at short notice during the 2026 war.

How we scored it

The accident record (86) is the strongest factor: no fatal accident in almost 60 years and only minor damage since 2006. Incidents (60) reflect a record that is quiet mainly because little is reported. The fleet (55) is small and second-hand and comes out of a decade of sanctions. Oversight (55) gives credit for no EU ban, but the airline is not on the IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary registry, and the regulator is rebuilding and publishes no accident reports. The environment (42) is the weakest factor. Overall 67.