Soleimani International Airport

Soleimani International Airport, officially The Martyr Qassem Soleimani International Airport (Arabic: مطار الشهيد قاسم سليماني الدولي maṭār ash-shahīd qāsim sulaymānī ad-duwalī; IATA: QSL, ICAO: OQSL), informally known as New Baghdad International Airport (مطار بغداد الدولي الجديد maṭār baghdād ad-duwalī al-jadīd), is the newer and larger of two international airports serving Baghdad, the capital of the Iraqi Arab Republic and second-most populous city in the Arab Union. Located approximately 30 kilometres north of Downtown Baghdad in the suburb of Hosseinia, Soleimani International Airport consists of three runways (the 3880-metres-long runway 3R/21L, 3345-metres-long runway 3L/21R and 2035-metres-long runway 12/30). The airport was developed in order to reduce the burden of the significantly overcapacity (as much as 220%) Baghdad International Airport; construction began in late 2016 and the airport was officially opened on 1 March 2020. It is connected to Downtown Baghdad via the Baghdad Metro's New Airport Line, which terminates at New Airport Station, located immediately adjacent to Soleimani International Airport's international departures terminal, to which it is connected via underground corridor.

The originally planned name for the new airport was simply New Baghdad International Airport; however, following the assassination via drone strike of Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani by the United States at Baghdad International Airport on 3 January 2020, alongside Commander of the Iraqi National Guard Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and eight others (four Iraqis and four Iranian nationals), the soon-to-be-opened airport was officially renamed in honour of Soleimani, who had been popularly revered across the Arab Union since at least 2017 for his dedicated and effective leadership of the allied Iranian forces that contributed significantly to the decisive defeat by the Arab Union's Union Defence Forces (UDF) and National Guard of ISIS/Daesh, which had managed to occupy significant portions of Iraq as well as Syria between 2014 and 2019. The new airport's official renaming took place alongside the simultaneous adoption by the Arab Air Force of a new name for its largest airbase in Iraq, formerly known as Rasheed Airbase and renamed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis Airbase, located 11 kilometres southeast of Downtown Baghdad.