Qleiaat airport: Request to award work to MEA subsidiary criticized

BEIRUT — Cabinet on Friday postponed review of a Transport Ministry request to award Qleiaat Airport rehabilitation work to a Middle East Airlines subsidiary, a plan criticized by local media.

Contacted by L’Orient-Le Jour, a government source said that no decision has yet been made, with ministers awaiting an opinion from the Civil Aviation Authority. According to this source, the issue will be revisited next week.

On the Cabinet session's agenda Friday, item 25 concerned the request from the Transport and Public Works Ministry, headed by Fayez Rasamny, to the Council for Development and Reconstruction to contract with MEAS (Middle East Airport Services, a subsidiary of MEA).

The company would be put in charge of rehabilitation and maintenance work to put Qleiaat airport into operation. The project, announced for late 2025 and to be awarded in early 2026, is supposed to be assigned to interested companies following a tender process, based on specifications prepared by the Civil Aviation Authority, as provided in the amendment to the public-private partnership (PPP) law passed last December.

An initial payment of $15 million?

The bypassing of this procedure and the request to award the contract by mutual agreement have been criticized in the press. The daily al-Akhbar (close to Hezbollah) denounced Minister Rasamny, accusing him of “violating the law” and “awarding contracts as he pleases.” The newspaper then denounced “government bias,” asserting that the minister requested an initial payment of $15 million in favor of MEAS. This amount, however, does not appear in the Cabinet session's agenda.

Contacted by L’Orient-Le Jour, a source at MEA said that the issue is “the minister’s decision” and “not that of MEA,” inviting journalists to address the Minister of Public Works. The ministry, for its part, did not wish to comment.

A source at the Civil Aviation Authority only said that the project for Qleyaat airport “is being handled directly by the Minister of Public Works and Transport and does not currently fall under the purview of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation.” Sajih Attieh, chair of the parliamentary Public Works Committee and member of the National Moderation bloc, who has long advocated for the advancement of this project, was not immediately available for comment.

At the end of November, the Director of Civil Aviation at Beirut International Airport (AIB), Amine Jaber, said that “while the master plan for (Qleiaat) airport is complete, further studies are still needed to determine its fate.”

Three months earlier, Rassamny stated that “the economic feasibility study for Qleiaat airport is complete” and that “the project was awaiting executive measures to move forward,” announcing at the time that awarding the rehabilitation work would begin in early 2026.

Converting Qleiaat military airport into a civilian facility has been discussed for several years, particularly to ease congestion at Beirut Rafik Hariri Airport, the only operational civil airport in the country. During the open war between Hezbollah and Israel, which reached Beirut in September 2024, the drive to rehabilitate a second civil airport at Qleiaat became more urgent, as the Israeli army targeted the surroundings of the airport.

Last December, when redevelopment work began at Beirut airport — also carried out by MEAS — there was some opacity about the dossier, with Rasamny not revealing the amount invested in this state-funded project, nor addressing the procurement procedures for work designed by the engineering firm Dar al-Handassa.