  Observations show the ubiquitous presence of propagating magnetohydrodynamic
(MHD) kink waves in the solar atmosphere. Waves and flows are often observed
simultaneously. Due to plasma inhomogeneity in the perpendicular direction to
the magnetic field, kink waves are spatially damped by resonant absorption. The
presence of flow may affect the wave spatial damping. Here, we investigate the
effect of longitudinal background flow on the propagation and spatial damping
of resonant kink waves in transversely nonuniform magnetic flux tubes. We
combine approximate analytical theory with numerical investigation. The
analytical theory uses the thin tube (TT) and thin boundary (TB) approximations
to obtain expressions for the wavelength and the damping length. Numerically,
we verify the previously obtained analytical expressions by means of the full
solution of the resistive MHD eigenvalue problem beyond the TT and TB
approximations. We find that the backward and forward propagating waves have
different wavelengths and are damped on length scales that are inversely
proportional to the frequency as in the static case. However, the factor of
proportionality depends on the characteristics of the flow, so that the damping
length differs from its static analogue. For slow, sub-Alfvenic flows the
backward propagating wave gets damped on a shorter length scale than in the
absence of flow, while for the forward propagating wave the damping length is
longer. The different properties of the waves depending on their direction of
propagation with respect to the background flow may be detected by the
observations and may be relevant for seismological applications.
