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The remains of the old fleet of Ariana, Afghanistan's national airline, lie in a pile of tangled scrap near Kabul airport, the detritus of civil war. Nevertheless, flying to Afghanistan is now easier than it has been for years, with a number of commercial carriers offering services. Kabul airport has been upgraded by Nato, although it still lacks an adequate radar system, inhibiting many commercial carriers starting services to the country. Afghanistan has airlinks to all its neighbours, with the exceptions of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

Delays at Kabul airport are frequent, and queues at immigration are long. Kabul's airport code is KBL.

Ariana Afghan Airlines
Set up with the help of PanAm in the late 1940s, state-run Ariana has recently replaced its fleet with a donation of old Airbus planes from Indian Airlines. It operates an increasing number of routes into Kabul, but the UN and many embassies bar their staff from flying with Ariana due to safety concerns. The exception to this is the weekly Frankfurt service, which is operated by Air Luxor under a code-sharing agreement with Ariana. The daily Dubai service is Ariana's most popular and convenient route.

Ariana currently operates international service to/from the following destinations.

China Urumqi (weekly)
Germany Frankfurt, Munich (both weekly)
India Delhi (twice weekly), Amristar (weekly)
Iran Tehran (weekly)
Kuwait Kuwait City (weekly)
Pakistan Islamabad, Quetta, (both weekly)
Russia Moscow (weekly)
Saudi Arabia Riyadh (weekly), Jeddah (twice weekly)
Tajikistan Dushanbe (weekly)
Turkey Istanbul (twice weekly), Ankara (weekly)
UAE Dubai (daily), Sharjah (twice weekly)

Full timetables online booking can be found at Ariana's website.

KamAir
KamAir is Afghanistan's first privately run airline. They fly four times a week between Kabul and Dubai. Further routes are planned to Istanbul, Dusseldorf and Almaty. KamAir also operate an expanding domestic schedule.

In Febraury 2005, a KamAir flight between Herat and Kabul crashed with the loss of over a hundred lives. Bad weather, rather than bad maintenance, was blamed for the crash, but the UN and many foreign embassies forbid their staff from flying with KamAir due to safety concerns.

Schedules can be found at KamAir's website, along with booking information.

Pakistan International Airways
Jokingly referred to by their acronym 'Prayers In the Air', PIA fly three times a week between Islamabad and Kabul, with one of the flights also stopping in Peshawar. See their website for more details.

Azerbaijan Airways
Popular with aid workers prevented from flying with Ariana, Azerbaijan Airways (Azerbaijan Hava Yollari) fly from Baku on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Details are on the airline's website.

Other carriers
In March 2005, Indian Airlines announced the start of a route between Kabul and Delhi. Air Arabia, operating from Bahrain, plan to start a twice-weekly Kabul service from June 2005. Qatar Airways similarly announced a Doha-Kabul service in 2004, but this route has been postponed indefinitely.

UNHAS (United Nations Humanitarian Air Services) and AirServ operate flight services to, and within, Afghanistan for the aid community.