All of the Cypriot airline's operations had to be suspended following the end of the hostilities in 1974 because Nicosia International Airport, the only airport of the island, had to be closed. Although the Turkish troops did not capture it, they were close enough to it to demand that it not be reopened. The government of Cyprus then moved quickly to build a small terminal by a runway in Larnaca and Cyprus Airways restarted limited operations from there on 8 February 1975. Specifically the airline leased from British Midland Airways Viscount turboprops to fly a stripped down route network to a few key cities in the region: Beirut, Tel Aviv, and Athens via Heraklion, with connections to London on British Airways. Cyprus Airways leased a pair of DC-9 jets in August 1975 to resume its own flights to London (via Salonika).