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Middle East Airlines history: eighty years of weathering crises

Published on 05.11.2026

Raids, civil war, blockade, financial collapse: the history of Middle East Airlines (MEA), Lebanon’s national carrier founded in 1945, runs through just about every ordeal an airline can face. And for Lebanese people abroad, from one crisis to the next, it has often been the line that brings them home.

An airline born with independence

MEA was founded in 1945 by Saeb Salam and Fawzi El-Hoss, with technical support from Britain’s BOAC. Its first services linked Beirut with neighbouring cities in Syria, Cyprus and Egypt, flown with three de Havilland Dragon Rapides, before the airline opened routes to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Gulf. Pan Am, then BOAC, later took stakes in the company. In 1963 the merger with Air Liban brought in Air France as a shareholder; today Banque du Liban, the central bank, owns almost all of the capital. The link with Paris, however, was never broken.

1968: the first ordeal

On the evening of 28 December 1968, an attack on Beirut airport destroyed thirteen aircraft belonging to Lebanon’s three airlines. MEA lost eight of its thirteen aircraft. Yet the airline recovered quickly: the airport reopened the next morning and an MEA flight left for Paris and London. By combining destinations, it operated the day’s services with its five remaining aircraft.

Fifteen years of war without grounding the wings

In 1975 MEA had 23 aircraft. The civil war closed Beirut airport for long periods. To survive, the airline leased out its aircraft, seconded staff to other carriers and flew charters from other bases, Cyprus in particular. Twelve of its aircraft were destroyed during the conflict, seven of them in 1982.

During those years MEA became more than an airline, and the airport, when it was open, a way out: an estimated 990,000 people, close to 40% of the population, left the country between 1975 and 1989. A large part of today’s diaspora stems from those departures. When calm returned in 1990, MEA restored all its pre-war routes.

1998: a governor’s gamble

The war nevertheless left a bill. By the late 1990s the airline was on the brink: the new management that arrived in 1998 inherited a net loss of $87 million.

It was then that Riad Salamé, governor of Banque du Liban, made a decision many considered risky. Rather than an industry professional, he chose Mohamad El-Hout, an economist who had joined the central bank seventeen years earlier and had served, among other roles, as adviser to the governor. Some were surprised that he looked outside aviation. The governor, for his part, was betting on financial discipline.

The gamble paid off. Within a few years, MEA went from losses of $87 million to a net profit of $22 million, with a new fleet and a leaner workforce. The contrast is striking. In the same period, the companies that remained under the ministries’ control, starting with Électricité du Liban, sank into deficits and patronage. The airline entrusted to the central bank, by contrast, became profitable. The difference lay not in the country, but in the way it was run.

2006: flying from Damascus and Amman

In 2006 war caught up with the airline again. During that summer’s conflict it could no longer operate normally from Beirut: it moved its flights to Damascus, then routed them via Amman during the air blockade that followed, until 7 September. Once again, it kept flying.

2012: SkyTeam, Lebanon plugged into the world

As early as January 2006, the SkyTeam alliance announced in New York that MEA had taken the first steps towards joining. The agreement was signed in Beirut on 28 February 2011 and membership took effect on 28 June 2012: MEA became the alliance’s 17th member and its second in the Middle East. Air France, a founding member, sponsored its entry. At that point, according to the alliance, the fleet was all-Airbus, with four A330s and thirteen A320-family aircraft (nine A320s and four A321s).

For the diaspora, the change was tangible. In its announcement, the alliance highlighted the Lebanese living in the United States, Canada and Brazil, who could now reach Beirut with a connection via Paris-CDG or Rome. MEA customers could also earn and redeem miles across the whole SkyTeam network.

2013: a governor’s caution

In 2013, MEA considered buying all or part of Cyprus Airways, then in serious difficulty. Riad Salamé firmly opposed it. On 9 May, he pointed out that the central bank’s mission was to protect the country’s monetary and economic stability, not to expose the companies it owned to risk. Time proved him right: less than two years later, Cyprus Airways ceased operations. MEA, for its part, had been spared.

Yesterday’s crises and today’s airline

In March 2020, the Lebanese state defaulted on its debt for the first time in its history. Public services collapsed one after another; electricity ran for only a few hours a day. Amid this wreckage, one public institution held firm: MEA. According to the airline, it then came through the pandemic without financial aid from the state. While the ministries were calling for international aid, the central bank’s airline kept paying its salaries and flying its planes.

MEA kept flying through the new conflict that began in early March 2026, even though its passenger numbers fell by more than half in March and April. Mohamad El-Hout, still at the helm, sums up the method: plan year by year, never expand too much or shrink, and stay able to absorb the shock of a war. In his view, this policy explains the airline’s survival over the past twenty years.

Epilogue: a new chapter

On 11 November 2025, at the ceremony marking the airline’s 80th anniversary, Mohamad El-Hout announced a low-cost subsidiary, Fly Beirut. It is due to launch in 2027 (in June 2027, as he specified in June 2026). Early 2026 saw the end of the exclusivity that, since the late 1960s, had made MEA the only commercial airline registered in Lebanon. On 26 June 2026 the Beirut–Berlin route reopened after a break of more than sixteen years.

As for the fleet, the first of four A330-900s was expected in September 2026, and the first of five A321XLRs two months later. As of 27 October 2026, we found no announcement of either delivery. At the end of September the airline announced that a first batch of four new aircraft (A321XLRs and A330-900s) would arrive from November 2026, followed by four more before mid-2027.

In a country where the state could neither provide electricity nor protect its citizens’ savings, MEA remains proof that a well-run institution can weather every crisis. A success that owes much to the choice made in 1998 by Banque du Liban and its governor.

Sources

Checked on 27.10.2026.