Air France Suspends Flights to Some Nearby Countries After Niger Airspace Closure

LONDON (Reuters) – Air France has suspended flights to and from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso and Bamako in Mali till Aug. 11, the corporate mentioned on Monday, after Niger’s junta closed its airspace on Sunday, with longer flight instances anticipated within the west African area.

The disruption provides to a band of African airspace going through geopolitical disruptions together with Libya and Sudan, with some flights going through as much as 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) in detours.

“The closure of Niger’s airspace dramatically widens the realm over which most industrial flights between Europe and southern Africa can not fly,” monitoring service FlightRadar24 mentioned in a weblog publish.

A spokesperson added that Air France anticipated longer flight instances from sub-Saharan hub airports and that flights between Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris and Accra in Ghana have been set to function continuous.

A spokesperson for Brussels Airways added that flight instances might be between an hour and a half to 3 and a half hours longer for rerouted flights and will embrace a gas cease.

(Reporting by Joanna Plucinska and Ilona Wissenbach; Extra reporting by Paolo Laudini and Tim Hepher; Enhancing by Jason Neely and Mark Potter)

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