More airlines fly over Afghanistan in last week as Middle East tensions rise

EVA Airways

09/10/2024 13:11

By Joanna Plucinska and Mohammad Yunus Yawar
       LONDON/KABUL, Oct 8 (Reuters) - Airlines have diverted
more flights over Afghanistan over the past week to avoid
Iranian airspace, data shows, adding to journey times and fuel
costs in the latest disruption for routes between Asia and
Europe as tensions in the Middle East escalate.
    Flights over Afghanistan were already growing in recent
months, but expectations of an Israeli response to an Iranian
ballistic missile attack on Israel last week have furthered that
trend, data from flight tracker FlightRadar24 shows.
    EASA last week issued a warning for airlines to avoid
Iranian airspace.
    FlightRadar24 showed 132 overflights of Afghanistan on Sept.
29. On Oct. 2, the day after Iran attacked Israel, the number of
Afghan overflights rose to 176.
    On Oct. 6, the daily number had steadily risen to 222. 
    Taliban officials said the number of overflights were even
higher in recent days than the FlightRadar24 data showed.
    "Specifically, over the past five or six days, there have
been about 350 transit flights in 24 hours, compared to around
100 transit flights (a year ago) previously," said Imamudden
Ahmadi, the spokesperson for the Taliban-run Ministry of
Transportation and Aviation.
    FlightRadar24 on Tuesday showed British Airways  ICAG.L  and
Singapore Airlines  SIAL.SI  flights using Afghanistan's
airspace. 
    The data did not show a breakdown of which airlines were
using Afghan airspace more in the last week. British Airways and
Singapore Airlines did not immediately respond to a Reuters
request for comment.
    Many airlines had started routing through Iran and the
Middle East after Russian and Ukrainian skies were closed to
most Western carriers when the Ukraine war began in 2022.
    The new rerouting shows the difficult calculus airlines are
forced to make as the safety of the airspace across the Middle
East becomes more precarious and fears of a regional war rise a
year after the start of the Israel-Hamas war. 
    "What was already a very limited set of route options is now
down to the last few choices that there are - hence Afghanistan
seeing more traffic," said Mark Zee, the founder of flight-risk
information sharing organization OPSGROUP.
    Air traffic control for carriers flying over Afghanistan has
not been available since the Taliban took over three years ago -
leaving airlines to rely on guidelines from regulators.
    "I expect that this avoidance of Iran, and possibly Iraq,
will continue for several weeks at least, until either Israel
makes a move, or the situation calms," Zee said.
        

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Flights over Afghanistan: Singapore Airlines flight path    https://reut.rs/3yJnwvI
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 (Editing by Philippa Fletcher)
 ((Joanna.Plucinska@thomsonreuters.com; 00447721669853; Reuters
Messaging: @joannaplucinska))