Maiyar Haidar, Baladi News, Damascus
The Syrian Ministry of Transport issued on Tuesday a decision to suspend the license of Al-Sham Wings airlines which is owned by Rami Makhlouf for 30 days as well as stopping all kinds of shipments accompanying the passengers and preventing the plane's captain, his assistant, and the rest of the staff; engineers and technicians from flying for 90 days.
Iyad Zidan, the director general of Civil Aviation said in statements reported by "Al-Ba'th" newspaper of the regime that the reason behind the penalty is because of the excess luggage on the plane of Al-Sham Wings airlines. However, some observers confirmed that severe disputes occurred between Rami Makhlouf , Maher and Bashar Al-Assad after the death of Anisa Makhlouf, the mother of Bashar Al-Assad and the aunt of Rami Makhlouf. The decision of suspending the work of Al-Sham Wings airlines was valid since 10 days, but hadn't been declared till yesterday which indicates that there was a period of time to avoid the disputes before publishing the decision which came after the failure of negotiations.
The investigation committee declared that the excess luggage was 13 tons, and according to its report about the accident the total luggage on the plane was 28,825 tons while the maximum weight allowed is 15,665 tons as set by the manufacturing company. Such huge excess weight led the wing of the plane to hit the runway while taking off and consequently to cancel the trip which if continued, would have caused a massive disaster while landing.
Meanwhile, the technical director of the institution, Yusuf Al-Hawsh pointed out that the bad distribution of luggage on the plane which already has excess luggage led to the imbalance in the gravity center of the plane which caused the wing to hit the ground while taking off and the damage was repaired immediately.
It seems quite obvious from the press declarations of the regime's officials that the disputes are serious between the two parties because of the conflicting accusations to the company owned by Rami Makhlouf. Observes consider this the result of covert greater disputes between Al-Assad and Makhlouf families.