First regular flights to Sarajevo using an airfield in the suburb of Butmir begin in 1930 when the domestic airline Aeroput opened a regular route linking Belgrade to Podgorica via Sarajevo. A year later, Aeroput opened a new route which linked Belgrade and Zagreb via Sarajevo, Split, and Rijeka. In 1935, Aeroput operated three times weekly the non-stop route Belgrade – Sarajevo, which was extended to Dubrovnik a year later. In 1937, Aeroput included regular flights linking Sarajevo to Zagreb, and 1938 was the year when first international flights were introduced when Aeroput extended the route Dubrovnik – Sarajevo – Zagreb to Vienna, Brno, and Prague. At the beginning of the Bosnian War, the airport was put under control of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA). When the regular flights were stopped, the JNA evacuated some 30,000 people, mostly women and children, who were spouses and children of JNA officers fleeing the siege of Sarajevo; the first humanitarian aid from the US and France arrived in this period too. On 2 May 1992 Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovi? and his daughter flew into the airport from Lisbon, where they had been taking part in EC-mediated talks. Although guaranteed EC Protection, the airport had been seized by the JNA and they were held in the airport against their will. Their situation was made public when, that evening, a woman phoned the airport to ask for the whereabouts of her daughter and Izetbegovi? took the phone, proclaiming "Dear lady, this is President Izetbegovi?, please call the Presidency, call the TV station and tell them we are being held against our will!". Izetbegovi? negotiated his own release, leading to himself and his daughter being released on Dobrovolja?ka Street in exchange for safe passage of an ill-fated JNA column. After JNA left, the airport was for a while under control of Bosnian Serb forces and in June 1992, they handed over the airport to the UN to use it for humanitarian purposes (United Nations Security Council Resolution 757). In the biggest humanitarian operation in history of the UN that followed, during the Bosnian war, some 13,000 flights were carried out and over 160,000 tons of international humanitarian aid was delivered to the besieged city of Sarajevo. The airport re-opened to civilian air traffic on 16 August 1996 and has since been renovated and slowly restored. Since the Dayton Agreement in 1995, the airport has a commercial flight business which includes Austrian Airlines, Lufthansa, Air Serbia, Croatia Airlines, Turkish Airlines, and others. On 18 October 2005, Paddy Ashdown, the High Representative of Bosnia and Herzegovina, suspended a decision by Bosnian authorities to name the airport after Alija Izetbegovi?, the first President of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The High Representative stated that such a renaming might undermine the reconciliation process by alienating non-Bosniak citizens. In 2005, the European branch of the Airports Council International awarded Sarajevo the award of Best Airport Under 1 Million Passengers. In 2013, Sarajevo International Airport handled 665,638 passengers which was more than all of the other airports in Bosnia and Herzegovina combined and a 14.7% increase from 2012. This was till then the highest number of passengers per year since the reopening of the airport. On 26 December 2014, the airport welcomed its 700,000th passenger on Austrian Airlines flight OS758 to Vienna. In May 2015, work started on expansion of Sarajevo International Airport. Current work is undergoing on expansion of arrival area, adding more passport control check stands and rearranging whole arrival area to make it more passenger friendly. Next to follow is expansion of check in area which will include three more check in counters making it total of 15 check in counters. By the end of the year the airport will begin with platform expansion and the construction of rapid exit taxiway with scheduled completion by mid of the next year.