Design competition ... travellers vie for free seats on Jazeera Airways' first postwar flight to Beirut
Well, it's one way of boosting tourism to war-scarred Lebanon. To celebrate their resumption of flights to Beirut this week, Kuwait's Jazeera Airlines (no relation to the TV station) gave away a planeload of free tickets on its first postwar flight on Wednesday evening.
All would-be travellers had to do to secure their free seat was turn up at Kuwait International Airport wearing a T-shirt with the slogan "I love Lebanon". Cue a flurry of T-shirt making and a large queue.
According to the airline's Fawaz Al Sirri, hundreds of people turned up in some pretty creative outfits, but only 104 went on to check in for that evening's flight - the first since the lifting of the blockade on September 5.
The airline plans to return to its prewar service of 11 flights per week by November. It joins the ranks of BA franchise BMED and Emirates in resuming flights to Lebanon, which had been expecting a record 1.6 million tourists in 2006.
