Beirut's airport at night in the 1960s. (Credit: Lebanese National Tourism Council, Georges Boustany Collection)
If it could speak, what stories would the airport tell? Would it recount its vibrant youth in the 1950s or its somber depression three decades later? The post-war returns or the departures driven by crisis? Today, its joints are aching: Escalators malfunction, colors are dull and lines grew ever longer.
Rafik Hariri International Airport (RHIA) knows it is weary — it’s reminded of this constantly. Yet, it remains indispensable. As the country’s sole point of entry and exit, all of Lebanon converges and collides within its crumbling walls. During this anxiety-ridden month of August, its departure hall is packed with travelers.
“I don’t like it. All it reminds me of is separation,” said Katie, from the Bekaa Valley, after seeing her sister off, who was terrified by the prospect of regional escalation and hastily returning to Sydney.
Amid economic collapse and worsening security, the airport mirrors the nation: It is on life support, far from the thrilling adventures of its early years.
At Rafik Hariri International Airport, relatives welcome the Lebanese diaspora. (Credit: João Sousa)
On June 6, 1939, the first aerodrome in Beirut was inaugurated in Bir Hassan. Lebanon was not yet independent, and the project was celebrated with much fanfare before a crowd of a thousand. Lufthansa, Palestine Airways and other renowned airlines were already servicing it.
Beirut was even one of the main stopovers on Air France’s Indochina route. For the French authorities, it was the “capital of the Levant” and served almost as a “stronghold of the mandate,” noted historian Carla Eddé — a “comfort zone” where one spoke “good French.”
During World War II, the airport became a military base held by the Allies.
After independence, President Camille Chamoun (1952-1958) embarked on a path of modernization for Lebanon. The capital continued its expansion, and the Bir Hassan aerodrome “became cumbersome due to its proximity to the city,” explained historian Charles Hayek.
More importantly, it seemed too modest for the emerging Lebanon, the one theorized by Michel Chiha, which the airport was, in some ways, meant to represent: “The axis of a three-pronged propeller: Africa, Asia and Europe.”
“The Bir Hassan airport had become obsolete and didn’t align with the liberal economic logic of the time,” said Eddé. “To quote historian Samir Kassir’s words, the infrastructure had to match the era’s ‘three Bs’: Beirut, brothels and banks.”
A tourist destination
Inaugurated in Khaldeh on April 23, 1954, the new airport was one of the first investments of the nascent state and was distinguished by its avant-garde architecture. It quickly established itself as the premier air traffic hub in the region, despite some Syrian attempts to dissuade foreign companies from serving it. Alongside Middle East Airlines — which merged with Air Liban in 1963 — the airport became a symbol of Lebanese success.
The interior of Beirut's international airport, 1969. (Credit: wikicommons)
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, with a prosperous and dynamic economy, Lebanon could boast of being the most stable country in the Arab world, serving as a bridge between the Gulf, India, Iran, Europe and the United States. Beirut was a world-class tourist city, a regional hub welcoming Arab entrepreneurs and Western businessmen on layovers.
“People loved passing through, even for a two-day stopover, to enjoy the dolce vita,” said Eddé.
But by the late 1960s, a dark wind began to blow across the country, and the Israeli-Arab conflict took to the skies.
On Dec. 28, 1968, Israel launched a spectacular operation in response to the hijacking of an Israeli plane in Athens by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), based in Beirut, a few days earlier. Israeli commandos stormed the western runway, conducted forced evacuations and destroyed 13 Middle East Airlines aircraft. Seven years later, Lebanon’s descent into hell officially began, and the airport became a symbol of militia control, sectarian hatred, forced departures and anxious returns. For 15 years, the Lebanese lived in rhythm with its closures and reopenings.
“When the war began, we left the country via Damascus because the airport was closed,” recalled Gregory Buchakjian, an art historian, contemporary artist and director of the Alba School of Visual Arts, who was five years old at the time. “However, when we returned at the end of 1976, it was on a MEA plane, and we landed at the Beirut airport,” he added.
Born in 1971, Buchakjian, in his 50s, developed an early passion for airplanes and recalled the days when his father would often take him on Sundays to the airport balcony to watch the iron birds take to the sky — a pastime shared by many Lebanese families at the time.
“That’s my first memory of the place,” he said. But soon, sadder memories would add to these fragments of innocence. “One day, we had a confrontation with militiamen, leftist forces or Palestinian forces, I can’t remember,” Buchakjian said. “My father still believed he lived in a country where everything worked. Sure, the war was there, but the city wasn’t destroyed yet.”
“I remember him yelling at them, demanding reparations! No one would dare do such a thing in the years to come,” he added.
The rhythm of war
The airport cannot speak, but throughout the long years of war, it remained vigilant: Silent, yet it witnessed everything. It endured attacks from militias of all factions; it was accused of being under the control of Palestinian armed groups and their allies or of hosting American military barracks within its vicinity. In June 1982, during the Israeli siege of Beirut, it was bombarded by Israel, which destroyed six MEA aircraft.
For 115 days, the airport was forced to close its doors. Yet, its reopening a few months later was celebrated as a significant event. Then President Amine Gemayel made a special appearance. “He arrived on the day our colors would once again soar through the skies, proving to the world that we are still alive,” said Marie-Thérèse Arbid in the Oct. 1, 1982, issue of L’Orient-Le Jour. On the first flight from Larnaca, the pilot’s announcement of the impending landing in Beirut was met with thunderous applause.
But hope was short-lived.
Reopening of Beirut's international Airport in the presence of President Amine Gemayel, Sept. 30, 1982. (Credit: L'Orient-Le Jour archives)
A year later, a bombing reduced the U.S. Army headquarters, located near the airport, to a pile of rubble. The explosion was claimed by the “Islamic Jihad” organization, a front for Hezbollah, in a context marked by the Iran-Iraq war and the support provided by several Western countries to Saddam Hussein, Tehran’s sworn enemy.
Beirut's airport even witnessed the longest hijacking in history when, on June 14, 1985, the path of TWA Flight 847, a Boeing 727, was diverted to Beirut by Hezbollah militiamen after taking off from Athens en route to Rome.
In a country torn apart by violence, sectarian affiliations partly shaped the connections people had with the airport. While the capital was divided, many Christians were reluctant or afraid to cross the demarcation line to reach the site.
“For me, it was the port of Jounieh that symbolized departures during the war, not the [Beirut] airport. We didn’t go through there,” said Claude, now in her 60s. “It was a time when, in Christian circles, there was talk of creating a civilian airport [on a stretch of highway] in Halat, and maritime routes between Jounieh and Larnaca were organized,” said writer Georges Boustany. “The whole debate revolved around one idea: The airport is in Muslim areas; we need one in Christian areas.”
Reflecting this sentiment, the Lebanese Forces (LF) bombed the airport in January 1987 to put it out of operation, forcing international partners to convert the Halat military airstrip into a civilian airport.
In the chaos of war, the airport, once a beacon of hope for unity, became the opposite of what it was meant to represent. However, Middle East Airlines (MEA), the only carrier serving Beirut in the mid-1980s, remained neutral and became one of the last bastions of pluralism and diversity. When times were tough and it was too dangerous to return home, dormitories were set up for employees living in the east of the city. To survive, the company leased its planes and personnel to other international carriers or operated charter flights, sometimes from alternative bases like Cyprus. The Times of London described the airline as arguably the most resilient in the world for its ability to persevere in challenging circumstances.
Air traffic resumes at Beirut's international airport, Aug. 23, 1985. (Credit: L'Orient-Le Jour archives)
But the once-thriving hub was no more. While the number of passengers reached about 750,000 in the early 1960s and peaked at 2.75 million in 1974, it had dwindled to just 230,000 by 1989. In a country where nearly 40 percent of the population packed their bags and left, the airport became synonymous with emigration, its dilapidation a metaphor for the decay of a once-joyful and carefree world, now as scarred as a bullet-riddled building.
“Towards the end of the war, when Michel Aoun and Samir Geagea were fighting, I used the airport once,” said Buchakjian. “It was in such a state… The flight took off at night, but the runways were plunged in darkness. And there wasn’t even a jet bridge to board the plane.”
Starting from scratch
Then, one day, the guns fell silent. The time for reconstruction had come, and the grand ambitions of the Hariri era began to take shape at the airport. It was time to rebuild, expand and modernize. By the end of 1998, the first phase of construction was completed, and a brand-new terminal was unveiled. Some critical voices condemned the urban planning surrounding the new site, as if it were designed to isolate the working-class neighborhoods of the southern suburbs from the rest of the capital. A road connecting downtown to the airport was developed that year, allowing travelers to pass through Hezbollah’s stronghold “without visually lingering,” as Mona Harb wrote in a 2006 article.
Four years later, the western wing was inaugurated. A new 3,800-meter-long and 60-meter-wide runway was built, encroaching on the sea to accommodate large aircraft. Then, in June 2005, a general aviation terminal was opened in the northwest corner of the airport. It featured a gleaming entrance, a symbol of a promised renewal.
“Like the reconstruction of Beirut, the airport’s reconstruction was driven by the idea that it was essential to forget the war and erase anything that alluded to those years of conflict,” said Hayek.
But optimists were quickly overtaken by the demons of a country haunted by a past that refused to fade. Even before the inauguration of the general aviation terminal, former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri was assassinated on Feb. 14, 2005, in an explosion widely attributed to the Syrian regime and Hezbollah. The airport was meant to wipe the slate clean of yesterday’s world. Instead, it bore the scars of its time: On June 22, 2005, it was renamed Rafic Hariri International Airport.
Fire after the Israeli raid on Beirut's international airport, July 13, 2006. (Credit: Sami Ayad/L'Orient-Le Jour archives)
Lebanon could neither escape its neighbors nor itself, and the airport paid the price once again on July 13, 2006, when Israeli military jets struck the site and rendered it inoperable. The words, the reasons... almost everything was familiar.
Then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared that the airport was being used to transport weapons from Iran to Hezbollah. For over a month, the infrastructure was out of commission.
A return to the past
From the civil war to the present day, the tumultuous history of Beirut’s airport has repeatedly raised a persistent question: Why is there only one airport in Lebanon?
When the sole terminal was built in 1998, it was designed to accommodate six million passengers annually — a capacity that has been exceeded since 2013. In response, authorities launched expansion projects in 2018, aiming to open a second terminal by 2027 to handle charter and low-cost flights. However, in March 2023, several NGOs criticized the lack of transparency in the contract awarding process, citing “abuses that open the door to corruption and nepotism and enable the illegal use of public funds.”
The airport has become an even greater cause for concern, as many opponents of Hezbollah believe the party exerts significant control over it. Some even suspect that Hezbollah has an arms depot nearby.
“During the reconstruction, Rafic Hariri had a highly centralized vision for the country, with the ambition of making Beirut a regional hub,” explained Albert Kostanian, a journalist and economic expert. “Other airports were neglected due to a lack of planning and economic expertise,” he added, also attributing the airport’s geographical monopoly to political reasons.
“It’s an essential point of control. During the Syrian occupation, the regime wanted to centralize everything, as it is obviously much easier to control one entry point than several, especially in regions that might be subject to different influences,” Kostanian said. “This security control is now perpetuated by Hezbollah.”
As the specter of an all-out war looms over Lebanon, the question of whether to rehabilitate the Kleiat airport, located in Akkar and currently used by the army, has resurfaced.
The airport stands as a symbol of a country where people are born to leave, with a diaspora three times larger than its population, and a collective imagination shaped by the success stories of emigrants. It frequently makes headlines, whether for romanticized tales of heartbreaking farewells and joyous reunions, or for political anxieties fueled by corruption and power struggles that dominate its operations.
All of this unfolds in a schizophrenic atmosphere, juxtaposed between advertisements for ultra-exclusive beach resorts and the desolate counters of the General Security Office, understaffed and under-resourced.
On the road leading to the halls of RHIA, a prominent sign bears a quintessentially Lebanese phrase for those who must endure the departure of their loved ones — whether driven by the looming threat of war, the aftermath of the Beirut port explosion, or the ongoing economic crisis: “Mitl ma waddaato tla’o” (May you find those to whom you said goodbye).
Sources:
- "Histoire de Beyrouth" by Samir Kassir, published in 2003.
- “La Dâhiye de Beyrouth: parcours d’une stigmatisation urbaine, consolidation d’un territoire politique" by Mona Harb.
- "Les mots de la stigmatisation urbaine," edited by Jean-Charles Depaule, 2006.
This article was originally published in L'Orient-Le Jour, translated by Sahar Ghousosub and edited by Yara Malka.
