An Austrian Airlines plane touched down Wednesday afternoon at Baghdad International Airport, dropping off passengers from Vienna and picking up passengers going to Austria on the return flight.
The decision by the Vienna-based airline to resume Baghdad flights should help Iraq lure international investors.
A number of western carriers have expressed interest in starting up a Baghdad route but none have yet to do so.
The airline said in a statement that it will fly the route three times a week.
Austrian Airlines began flying to Baghdad in 1982 but stopped in 1990 due to the first Gulf War.
The airline already flies to the northern Iraqi city of Irbil six times a week.
Irbil is much safer than the capital, which has struggled to attract international investors to anything except the surest economic bets.
Many regional carriers fly to the Iraqi capital, including Etihad Airways and Turkish Airlines.
But there had been no direct passenger flights between Baghdad and Western Europe.
Stockholm-based Nordic Airways launched commercial flights to Baghdad from Copenhagen, Denmark, in January 2009 but its operating license was revoked later that month.
German airliner Deutsche Lufthansa AG last year postponed the scheduled startup of a Munich-to-Baghdad route, citing a lack of customer interest.
Lufthansa has already resumed flights to Erbil, and had said it was gearing up for flights to Baghdad four times a week.
France’s Aigle Azur flew to Baghdad last fall on an inaugural flight carrying French officials.
The ceremonial flight was supposed to be followed by regularly-scheduled flights this year but those never materialized.