Buzzoca

Haiti’s main international airport reopened to commercial flights on Monday, a month after gangs opened fire on planes, leading to the second closure this year amid violence on the island.

Soldiers and police, backed by Kenyan police leading a U.N.-backed mission to quell the violence, have stepped up security in the area and a test flight was successful, the Haitian government said in a statement.

“The resumption of commercial flights marks a turning point for the Haitian economy,” the prime minister’s office said.

However, there were no flights or passengers this afternoon, as heavily armed police set up checkpoints at the airport and stopped public transportation.

An airport parking lot normally filled with hundreds of cars was filled with dozens of vehicles, most of them belonging to employees, the Associated Press (AP) reported.

An elderly Haitian man went to the airport tonight to check when he could fly out of Port-au-Prince, but there were no airline employees at any counter. He declined to comment out of fear for his safety.

Port-au-Prince’s Toussaint Louverture airport closed in mid-November after gangs opened fire on a Spirit Airlines flight as it was preparing to land, hitting a flight attendant who suffered minor injuries.

Other commercial planes were hit that day, prompting Spirit, JetBlue and American Airlines to cancel their flights to Haiti.

A day later, the Federal Aviation Administration banned U.S. airlines from flying to the Caribbean nation for 30 days.

Port-au-Prince’s airport was closed for nearly three months earlier this year after gangs launched coordinated attacks on key government infrastructure starting in late February. The gangs now control about 85 percent of the capital.

A Spirit spokeswoman told the AP today that its flights to Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haitien, where Haiti’s other international airport is located, are suspended “until further notice.”

A spokeswoman for American Airlines said they are monitoring the situation and will consider resuming flights to Port-au-Prince by the end of the year. A JetBlue spokeswoman did not respond to a message seeking comment.

As of last month, Haiti’s only operating international airport was in the northern coastal city of Cap-Haitien, but traveling there by land is dangerous because gangs control the main roads leading out of Port-au-Prince and are known to shoot up public transportation.

The few who managed to escape the wave of gang violence in the capital last month paid thousands of dollars for private air transportation to Cap-Haitien.

The violence, coupled with alleged threats and assaults by Haiti’s National Police, forced Doctors Without Borders to suspend its activities in the Caribbean country for the first time in its history in late November.

The aid group announced today that it had partially resumed operations in Port-au-Prince. However, patient transports have not resumed and one of its hospitals remains closed.

Some 5,000 people have been killed in Haiti this year, including more than 100 in a recent massacre in a gang-controlled community in Port-au-Prince.