I flew into Baghdad today from Beirut on Lebanon's Middle East Airlines. I sat next to a middle-aged Kurdish woman returning from a training workshop in Tunisia.

My Kurdish seatmate (who speaks fluent English, Arabic, Kurdish as well as, inexplicably, Dutch and Polish) was chatting with me about how much nicer MEA is than Iraqi Airways, which I usually take but didn't this time because of a scheduling conflict. The Lebanese planes are so much better maintained, so much cleaner, better food, in-seat videos, excellent service. The Kurdish woman then made some really technical remarks about the models of planes each airlines uses.

"How do you know all that?" I asked.

"I used to work for Iraqi Airways," she said. A wistful look came over her face.

"I saw Paris and London and New York. Even when our planes were grounded, we traveled to Jordan to do some maintenance on the ones stuck there at the airport," she continued.

"You can't go back to Iraqi Airways now?" I asked.

She laughed.

"Oh, no, no, no," she said. "It's not for everybody anymore. You have to know this person or that person, somebody important. The ministers take only their friends."

We sipped tea out of our little plastic cups and gazed out the window as we neared Baghdad. The verdant hills and sparkling sea we saw as we departed Beirut gave way to huge expanses of desert.

"Very different from Lebanon, no?" the Kurdish woman said.

"Yes, but the palm trees are beautiful," I said, trying to be diplomatic.

She was silent. We landed and taxied down the runway until we came to a stop next to a mysterious-looking plane that had no airline insignia on it, just a curlicue "M" in green.

"Which airline is that?" I asked my seatmate.

"Hmm, I don't know," she said.

We whispered that maybe the M was for Maliki, and this was the infamous private plane the Iranians gave the Iraqi prime minister for official business. Bugging devices included, presumably.

"Or maybe it's M for ministers," my seatmate said, referring to Iraq's notoriously corrupt Cabinet. "They already took the houses, the government, the country. Why not planes?"